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Let's start off (unless someone fires a link earlier) with this one: Millennials are shattering the oldest rule in politics
The article goes on to show that previous generations in UK and US have indeed formed a remarkably similar pattern of starting out voting for left side main parties (Labour/Dems) and moving rightwards (to Tories/GOP) with age, but Millennials aren't doing that, and are if anything sticking firmer with the left side parties with age.
When it comes to Britain, in particular, I suspect that Brexit may have a lot to do with this. For Millennial Remainers, in particular, the whole thing has evidently been a horrorshow; from following various FBPE types and hearing from friends who have lived in the UK, the thinking basically goes; for your entire life your country has belonged to the EU, which has given you ease of travel and has seemed to be without issues, and suddenly a bunch of (mostly) Tory-voting boomers decides to take the country out of the Union, and no-one still has managed to explained to you exactly how Britain has benefitted from this, or what fundamental reason for this there even was for the whole Brexit, beyond "Well, it's not as big a disaster as Remoaners are claiming when you look into it" (or, possibly, "Fuck you, Remoaner! Elitist! Take back control!")
With the Tories then increasingly becoming the party of Brexit, it would be little wonder if such types would continue to give Tories the wide berth, even if they start getting to the age where traditionally Tories start becoming more and more attractive, as an option.
Of course, US and UK are a bit expectional in how strongly there's an age-related left/right split with young voting for left parties and the old voting for right parties. It would be interesting to see if this replicates in other countries where Millennials and younger voters have recently been trending rightwards and where centre-left parties have for some time been more popular among the old than the youth, like Sweden. (Indeed, I already saw on Twitter that the effect is not replicating in non-Anglophone West.)
I'm going to go back to my theory that Conservatism is returning to what things were like in your lifetime or your parents lifetime, and Reaction is pushing back before living memory. I've argued it extensively here before.
The net result is that where before you turned 40 and got comfortable and started to say "Gee, I'd like the world not to change too much, I like it the way it is..." there was a party you voted for. Nixon, Reagan, Dubya all won elections in the US promising less change, keep things the same. I'm not sure that much of the modern Right Wing today promises keeping things the same, keeping them how they were when I grew up. Many seem to urge us on towards change, towards tearing up the social contract I grew up with, towards Retvrn to something I don't know, something new and scary. When I was a kid abortion was legal, my elementary school principle was Black, my dad's best friend on the charity board was gay. If you try to abolish the policies that allowed those things, or if I am convinced that you will even if you won't, my natural conservatism won't help you, it will hurt you. At times, there is no conservative option on the ballot in American politics.
I think this jibes with your Brexit theory of young Brits: traveling the EU and working or partying as they pleased was their birthright, it's what they grew up with. You can't sell conservative to them and say, oh we're going to destroy the world you grew up in. That's a contradiction in terms.
Millennials won't, can't!, become conservative if you don't put conservatism on the ballot.
Abortion is still legal in the majority of states
You think the GOP hates black principals? Wha
Gays can’t work for charities either?
I’m not sure what your arguing here. Do most millennials think republicans are the worst version MSNBC portrays them as? That’s depressing but would explain a lot
I've written extensively on the recent gubernatorial election in my home state, the state in which three generations of my family have been born and where my wife and I own a house up the street from where I grew up, where I've been registered as a Republican since the day I turned 18. Between Mastriano and Shapiro Shapiro, the Democrat, was the one who would conserve the state I grew up in.
Mastriano planned to cut public school staffing by 2/3. I attended public schools throughout, and got a great education in my local school district, I graduated with 30 college credits and my classmates wound up at a variety of ivy league schools. Houses in my school district, like mine, routinely demand a 20+% premium for the schools. Mastriano and his plan would have reduced my largest assets value, and destroyed a local institution I loved. Not conservative. Shapiro pledged to introduce vouchers for those who wanted them in failing school districts. Great! Compromise!
Mastriano stated repeatedly and clearly that abortion should be banned with no exceptions. So while, yes, abortion is under no immediate threat in my state, that is a result of the R candidate losing last November. If he had won, he would be seeking legislation banning abortion while doing everything in his executive power to make it difficult. My dating life would have been different had it been as high stakes as Mastriano desired. Shapiro wanted to keep things the same.
Mastriano stated that gay marriage should be illegal in all cases, and hinted at sodomy laws being reintroduced. Once again, on the ballot, do uncle James and uncle Craig get to stay legitimately married in their home state, a wedding I went to in Jersey when I was 12.
So, explain to me why the GOP can't be identified with their candidate for the highest office in the fifth most populous state? A purple state with a deep Republican bench in the state Senate and local executives, a state where moderates should do well everywhere but inner city Phillie and Pittsburgh.
I desperately want to vote for competent conservative candidates! I don't want a single day in my kid's school wasted on trans ideology! But my life is basically pretty good, I don't want to turn the world upside down. If all the R on the ballot offers is revolution, it's gonna be tough to vote for him.
Problem is, you want social liberalisation (access to abortion in case you knocked up that temporary girlfriend; gay marriage for your uncles) and that doesn't just stop at the step of the ladder you are on. The next step up is the trans ideology, just as the step below that was the gay rights, and the step below that was the contraception and abortion access.
Fiscally conservative, socially liberal gives you the guy who conserved the state you grew up in, but his party is the one waving the Pride flags (some out of convenience, some out of conviction) and by the time your kid grows up, then "trans ideology in school" will be "conserving the state I grew up in".
Sure, but I think we're (including my learned friend @Syo above) going afield from the original argument in OP and my response to it.
OP states that Americans are not voting conservative as they get older. A number of other commenters made the point that young people aren't achieving the kinds of lifetime milestones that they'd want to conserve; I'm making the point that even among the subset of 30-40 year olds in America that have achieved those milestones, the Republican party is failing to field candidates or a platform that wish to conserve the world that helped them achieve those milestones.
If the traditional mechanism is young poor 20 year old liberal becomes fat happy married rich homeowner and thus conservative because he wants to preserve the things that made them happy for their (biological or constructive) children; well I'm 31 and I'm a fat, happy, rich, married, homeowner and in my most recent gubernatorial election the Republican party failed to field a candidate that wanted to protect the way I grew up, the things that made me fat, happy, rich, married.
You can argue that the way I grew up was fundamentally disordered and unsustainable, but that's a very different argument, and it's not an argument to conserve it's an argument for change. It's not protecting the real, it is advocating for the hypothetical. That might be the future of the Republican party or the Right more broadly, but that means tactics will need to change: you cannot count on the Coalition of the Comfortable if your plan is to make everyone who likes the world as it is deeply uncomfortable.
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