Professor James Tilley, Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Jesus College and Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations, is presenting a new BBC Radio 4 series which examines the relationship between age and vote choice.

Across five episodes in The Kids are Alt Right?, James explores how ageing affects our political views, how people become attached to specific political parties when they are young, and how the choices made by political parties play out among the young and the old.

 

Each episode casts the spotlight on a different aspect of the relationship between age and politics. The starting point is how age affects people’s preference for the radical right. The first episode, What’s Going On?, explored the recent success of radical right parties and how their support base is often younger, rather than older, people.

Future broadcasts in the series cover:

• Getting Older – examining how the process of ageing affects our personality and our politics.
• The Next Generation – exploring the idea of political generations and how the formative experiences of our youth affect our politics through our lives.
• The Marketplace of Politics – focusing on how challenger parties offer new policies, and a new style of politics, to voters.
• None of the Above –a discussion of how the real party of the young is not the radical left or right, but ‘none of the above’.

Over the series, James argues that both ageing and generational effects are the key to understanding why mainstream parties do better with the old. Interestingly, this means, in some countries, that younger people are more likely to support the radical right as well as the radical left.

He said: “In some European countries, young voters are more likely to prefer radical right parties than are older voters. This can be surprising as there is a popular notion that as we age, we become increasingly right-wing. The relationship between age and how we vote is not that straightforward, however.”

James’ research is focused primarily in the fields of public opinion and electoral behaviours, specifically in Britain and the EU. His work concentrates on three main themes; explaining the changing role of social cleavages (class and religion) in predicting party choice; explaining the circumstances in which voters blame some governments for policy failures, but are willing to absolve others; and exploring the predictors of affective political polarisation, particularly the creation of identity groups around ‘Remain’ and ‘Leave’ after the Brexit referendum.

The Kids are Alt Right? Is broadcast at 1.45pm on Mondays, and episodes are also available afterwards via BBC Sounds.

With thanks to the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford who first published this news story.