Letters

Politics and the elusive youth vote

While we’re young

Mon Nov 27 2023 - 00:10

Sir, – Eoin Burke-Kennedy says the Conservative Party’s current low level of support among young voters risks “eroding its electoral base” into the long term and making it entirely reliant on older voters (“Britain’s Tories facing end of days as electoral wipeout looms”, Analysis, Economics, November 19th).

His analysis ignores a number of unfortunate realities about the nature of the youth vote, both here and in the UK.

First, (and ignoring the fact that young voters tend to vote in far fewer numbers than older cohorts), young voters tend to tilt to more liberal and radical options, they also tend to move around the political spectrum quite quickly.

Although it may seem like a distant memory for the party, as recently as May 2019 Fine Gael was by far the most popular party with 18 to 30 year olds in Ireland.

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In 2010, the Labour Party was in poll position with this cohort, and in 2007 it was Fianna Fáil.

All three parties have endured more than one electoral disaster in the intervening 15 years, so their popularity among the youth vote clearly did nothing for their long-term prospects.

Second, the unfortunate reality for young voters is that they will inevitably become older voters, and very few will vote consistently for the same party throughout their lives.

At their 1997 and 2001 election defeats, the Conservative Party received a derisory level of support from 18 to 30 year olds.

However, these same voters became the cohort between 35 and 50 who turbo-charged the Tories to four consecutive election victories between 2010 and 2019.

Youth is certainly wasted on the young, and it is folly to extrapolate long-term electoral trends based on a section of the electorate whose voting patterns are so erratic and unpredictable. – Yours, etc,

BARRY WALSH,

Dublin 3.