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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 think the concept of people changing their politics as they age is probably less useful than people staying the same and the politics changing around them. People don't really change their politics that much as they age (usually), but the issues that are important and what side a given position is on changes rapidly.
In this case, whatever event or realignment that will move the millennials "to the right" hasn't happened yet, or maybe isn't complete.
My personal argument is that Trump was the beginning of a basic generational political re-alignment that has yet to shake out. Once it does, we'll probably see the Millennials "on the right" more or less as the issues of the day work themselves to a competitive stalemate along new lines.
I agree, and it points to one possible explanation that hasn't been floated, which is that despite dominating the culture wars, left politics has not been particularly effective at changing policy. Thus the positions that they adopted while they were young are roughly the same ones that Democrats are pushing today. In this case, the explanation is that it's not the people that have failed to change, but the politics.
I'd say they've been very effective at changing policies, but the policies they want don't produce the results they thought, which discredits the policy, which provides impetus to shuffle the deck of left-wing-complaints for a new issue.
So: #MeToo!~ Smash the patriarchy! Believe all wammen! Wait.......not over Democratic officials!
Better try: #BLM!! Mah structural racisms! White people step back! ACAB! Wait......why is the murder rate rising?
Shit, how about: #Translivesmatter! There's an epidemic of violence against trans disabled BIPOC two-spirited sex workers! Wait.....why are they sterilizing kids?
This process will continue until the game theoretical competitive maximum is reached, and half the population winds up on the "You want to do WHAT now?" side. Also known as "conservatives". It is the nature of human beings, especially the sort that become "activists" to push the boundaries until they cannot. This is why roughly half the population is always "conservative". Activists raise and push issues until they hit too much pushback, then those collection of positions becomes the "left-right" divide for a while. And that is why Cthulu swims left. No matter how successful conservatives are in stalling an agenda, there's always another right behind it. The left controls the initiative, the gates to the elites, the media and "The Science". They choose the battleground, conservatives just fight on it.
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