IF this is true, AIBU to be gobsmacked?

[themental]

Popped up on my Facebook so for all I know, it could be fake news. BUT if it's not....

I feel shocked and kinda mildly sad about it.

And I know that's probably being unreasonable. Every vote is equal, and all ages have a say.

But... fuck me.

That the attitudes in the country are SO skewed depending on which side of fifty you fall on is worrying. The fact cons would have returned 0 seats in the youngest age bracket makes me wonder what incentive they have to lift a finger for them.

We had it easier. Okaaay. Tell me how many items of clothing in your wardrobe growing up, TVs and if you had central heating, double glazing and bathroom(s) halloumi. I’m late 40’s and lots of houses back in the day had no central heating. My parents were pretty well off. I still only had 2 coats in secondary school and one of those I was bought and forced to wear as I cycled fo school - a snorkel coat. Then let’s talk about your expectations of your first home if you haven’t moved out. Will your crockery, pots, pans, beds, sofas etc be new or second hand? We didn’t have massive debt as students. But you’re only expected to pay it back if you earn over a certain threshold.

As a student I lived in absolute dives, no source of heating upstairs and a gas fire downstairs, ice on the inside of the windows, threadbare, crumbling carpets. A couple of people I know as students, particularly in expensive cities like London, lived in squats. Different generations, different challenges.

The young tend to go left, the old tend to go right. And since the young tend to not bother to vote, you get the current result.

@halloumi2019

How patronising can you get

Right, I don't know about age maps / voting stats, and I'm not sure how you would ever know this information for certain as it's impossible to link individual votes to voters age. BUT, what is really apparent again is that our 'first past the post' voting system is completely failing people versus a proportional representation system.

Look at the vote stats:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50779901?fbclid=IwAR1FshPtsgWymKc7aiYu2kLDL_zMvlUU8-GpB2xEwCyVUz9-o3sFQhyGCr8

In a nutshell, just over 43% of people voted conservative. If you combine the figures for people that voted Labour, Lib dem, SNP or Green you get nearly 50%. In a nutshell, that means the majority of people voted for left wing parties, and yet left wing politicians are now only now a minority in government. No wonder so many people were pissed off on results day. Hardly very democratic is it? Our current voting system is no longer fit for purpose now that multiple political parties can be voted for, and we should move to a system of proportional representation.

It's not fake. It's from exit polling, where they will ask your age.

Of course we don't need to write our DOB on the ballot form. It's from the exit polls

I think with older generations, some people may vote tories as a status symbol amongst their peers/to follow the crowd, or perhaps do so because that’s how they have voted their entire lives etc. The younger you are, the less likely you are to succumb to pressure like this

I think it's younger people who are more likely to succumb to peer pressure, actually. Which generation is it that spawned influencers @halloumi2019?

64 year old labour voter here.

I used to vote for the Green party when I was in my teens and early 20s.

Then I grew up and my voting changed.

I still have my ideals but, like most people, it takes a bit of maturity to realise running a country is more complex than that.

As far as I know the only reason that voting slip numbers are ever cross referenced with the register is in the case of an election petition and even then only after its reached a certain stage.

It happened in Birmingham some years ago as part of an investigation into massive electoral fraud but even the only in relation to certain votes.. e.g
people known to be dead who'd mysteriously turned up and voted!!

henrysmycat thank you for your post. I found it interesting. Don't know why on earth you are accused of being horrible...

PS My 75 year old mother voted labour... And I think she would have voted Tory during the Thatcher years.

Are we not divided enough without stuff like this?

I'm in my thirties and voted Tory and most people in my peer group did as well. From a rural(ish) area if that makes any difference.

@halloumi 2019 you are so patronising. My parents were born in the late forties and my mother would have loved to have gone to university but grew up in council housing to working class parents and had no choice but to go straight out to work at 16. There just wasn't the opportunity for poor families to further their education. When they tried to buy their first house interest rates were at over 17%. They literally worked two jobs each to get on the property ladder and worked bloody hard all their lives. There are comfortable now but sacrificed a lot during their twenties and thirties to get where they are. They certainly didn't have it easy.

It is rubbish news - however, if I had an important decision to make, generally the average 35 year old you make an a better judgment call, compared to the average 18 year old.

Current thinking is that brain development is still very acute in older teenagers.

I am 75 and have voted Labour all my life. I actually wept when I read that Sedgefield had gone Conservative for the first time ever and that Dennis Skinner, who stood shoulder to shoulder with the miners and donated much of his salary to their cause, had lost his seat.

By the way I grew up on a NE council estate . Dad was a factory worker and mum worked in a canteen. I went to Grammar School and on to college then university none of which cost a penny!

Pixxie

"You probably expect youngsters to predominantly labour if they have massive uni debts".

Are students not aware that Labour introduced student fees in 1998, and increased them a few years later then?.

My son voted Conservative and he is 18.

Conservative voter here and I’m well below 50 lol, Labour offers nothing and Corbyn was a shambolic disaster for the party THANK GOD we dodged that bullet. I’m a remainer too but I also believe in democracy and so that to me had no merit to switch to such a heinous character and vote red.

It will be much harder for those on benefits but hopefully 5 years of a Conservative government will show people that handouts is not the way to live.

Who cares. Id trust an over 50 over a 20 yr old anyway
(Except Greta of course)

This is what horrifies me

They cant know this so soon they will know this because they took down your election number and paired it with your ballot number so they can track your vote

Did you think it was a secret?

@indecentfeminist I couldn't agree more. FPTP is ridiculous

What the Labour party needs to be thinking about is why they have lost support in their traditional strongholds, not about age demographics, which are already well known.

The pictured tweet in the OP is from 5 September 2018. It's nothing to do with the election we just had.

twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1037273833462542336

It's based on a YouGov poll from earlier that year.

This was published by YouGov... interestingly a tory established pollster. They can't have plucked the figures out of thin air. It must be possible to look at the demographic and shifting demographics of an area, combine this with age and local and national voting results and I bet you can get a relatively clear picture just from that. It will be on their website with the methodology If you take a look.

For those saying their son etc. voted Tory, they didn't say no-one would vote for them, but that would be the seat outcome.

Let's not forget that the old people of today were young once and probably were a lot more left leaning. They have simply conformed to type as they have aged,

Confirmed to type??

Maybe the older generation has lived through enough governments of all colours to make an informed decision?