I don’t have a lot of contact with twenty-somethings, as my son’s friends are now in their 30s, so I’m just as surprised as anyone else to hear that younger Canadian voters seem to be switching their preferences to the right unlike most young voters around the world:
Voting intentions among Canadians, September 2024.
Detail from a recent Leger poll.
In one of the more surreal twists of sky-high Canadian public dissatisfaction, the country now ranks as one of the world’s only places in which young people are supporting conservative parties at rates well beyond those of their parents.
A Leger poll from last month found that Conservative support was stronger among voters aged 18-34 than any other age cohort. The under-34s backed the Tories by 47 per cent, as compared to 45 per cent for those aged 35-54, and 41 per cent for voters over 55.
The phenomenon has also started to show up at the provincial level. With about two weeks to go until the B.C. election, the B.C. Conservatives have been put in sight of a majority government due largely to an unexpected wave of youth support.
According to a Sept. 30 Leger poll, voters under 34 were backing the B.C. Conservatives by 47 per cent as compared to the 39 per cent who intended to vote NDP. Among voters over 55, the allegiances were reversed: 48 per cent supported the NDP against 43 per cent for the Conservatives.
Nothing like this has really happened before — at least as long as Canada has had age-stratified opinion polling.
It’s not the first time that a majority of young voters have flocked to a conservative option. The Progressive Conservative landslides of 1958 and 1984 were both secured in part by winning over voters under 30.
But what’s happening now appears to be the first time that the average Canadian 21-year-old is more conservative than the average Canadian 65-year-old.
For now, at least, the phenomenon is somewhat unique to Canada. In the rest of the Anglosphere, political sentiments are still hewing to their traditional pattern of young people leaning progressive, with old people leaning conservative.
The current U.S. presidential election has Democratic candidate Kamala Harris commanding up to 60 per cent of the under-30 vote, as compared to roughly one third of young voters who said they would vote for Republican nominee Donald Trump.
In the U.K., the July general election found that support for right-wing options was directly proportional to the age of the voter. A mere 17 per cent of British voters under 24 voted either for the Conservatives or the populist Reform UK. Among Brits over 70, those same parties commanded a smashing 61 per cent.
In Australia, a recent YouGov poll asking voters if they wanted “more socialism” found that 53 per cent of Australians under 24 did.
