At Reform’s East England Conference on Saturday, held at Chelmsford City Racecourse, Nigel Farage considered the growing support for right-wing politics among young men: “Something big is going on” he said, “we’re seeing it in France… Italy… [a little bit] in Germany” and, of course, in the United States: “Who would have thought that Trump would have got 44% of the under 30 vote.” (Exit polls has this figure closer to 43%.) This youth swell, he concluded, seemed to be evident “today, here in Chelmsford” too.
Pause. Citation needed here. Is any of this true?
First, Reform’s weakest demographic in Britain is young people. Recently Zia Yusuf, Reform’s chairman, appeared to reveal via some screenshots that young members (under 25s) accounted for only two per cent of Reform’s total membership. At the last general election, Reform’s worst performance was with young voters, too. Though none of this, so far, negates Farage’s loose claims that a movement was underway.
Young voters – in Britain and in Europe – tend to cleave further left than the rest of the electorate. In the UK’s July general election, the second most popular party was not the Conservatives (the preference of just 5 per cent of 18-24 year olds), but the Greens. In Germany and France the weaker demographic for the radical right are the young, too.
But this leftward-slant is nowhere near as precipitous as it used to be. Young voters may tend to opt for parties of a more “radical” persuasion but that does not isolate them to the left. Support in Germany for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), for example, sits in the mid to high teens ahead of next month's election. And, among the young it's only one or two points off that. In 2015, Ukip's 12 per cent nationally was met with 8 per cent among the 18-24 year olds. This gap is not huge, and it may be narrowing. (In fact assumptions about the left/right identitarian split abound: commentators were caught unawares in 2017 when a French poll found LGBT voters were almost as keen on Marine Le Pen as straight voters.)
The famed unpopularity of the far-right among the young isn’t the fact of life it used to be, if indeed it ever was. And turnout complicates the picture: youth turnout is notoriously low and making assumptions about the young from those who do vote – urban graduates, mainly – may have a distorting effect. It is reasonable to suspect that the right would benefit from a generally expanded youth turnout, but for now that is mere conjecture.
But one thing is clear. The party of the right for young voters in Britain is Reform, not the Conservatives. Polls show a small advance among the young for Reform. According to Survation, as many as four in 10 young voters say they would consider voting Reform. It’s likewise four in 10 nationally.
“Would consider” is a broad and unhelpful gauge of probability. But this illustrates one thing: the right is gaining traction. During Ukip's peak (2015-ish), as many as three in 10 “considered” voting for the party. The uptick to four in 10 for Reform is a demonstrable advance for this version of the British right.
And Farage, as usual, is more popular than his current political vehicle. He is the most liked mainstream politician right now. According to that Survation poll, 38 per cent of the country like him compared to 37 per cent who dislike him. Among the 18-24 year olds, 32 per cent like him and 28 per cent dislike him. And of the youth who actually vote – the most left-leaning of all demographics in Britain today – 40 per cent feel unsure about the Reform leader.
But, the Conservative and Reform advance against the Labour government has less to do with net gains for the right, and more to do with Labour's base losing enthusiasm. Labour has lost voters since the election, while Reform and Conservatives have netted supporters. But Labour's loss is greater than the Reform/Tory gain, making the latter's advance appear greater than it really is.
It is a similar story in the United States. Of all groups who turned out to vote in November, young voters made up the smallest share.
And so, as with Labour in the UK, the “advances” made by Donald Trump among the young indicated a Kamala Harris loss, rather than a huge Trump win. So yes, the right is creeping forward but not at the pace as many headlines might like to claim.
[See also: Can Labour escape decline in 2025?]
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