To be sick of this "all old people vote Tory" narrative

[WatchoRulo]

There really is no nuance to any debate when people make ill informed claims of this type.

Anecdotally from my friends and family - the only Tory voters are the younger people.

Factually - it's very obviously the case that not everyone over, say, 60 suddenly starts voting Tory.

Also - like the "old people without degrees all voted for Brexit", these claims are based on a statistical extrapolation, often from a very small sample size and are also based entirely on what people who were asked told the researchers. This "data" is from the very same polling organisations that failed to predict the outcome of the referendum, yet somehow some people have accepted their guesses as immutable truths and "facts".

We have a crap FPTP electoral system which means most people don't get what they vote for.

It's a secret ballot - the only way to know for certain the detailed demographics of who votes for what would be to check who actually voted for whom.

I am really fed up of the narrative that as a boomer (aged 60, still working and paying tax and NI by the way) I have deliberately shat on younger people all my life (why would I - I have a teenage DD).

I have personally never voted Tory and consider it vanishingly unlikely I ever would, and I recognise that I've had some lucky breaks from when I was born, but I haven't deliberately stolen from young people.

Unkind way to refer to Labour voters!

No-one has claimed that all “old people” vote Conservative. But there is a definite trend backed up by multiple opinion polls.

If you’ve heard people say “old people vote tory”, you may be interpreting it too literally as a statement that all old people vote conservative rather than a claim about the general trend.

😁

And mine. That was the first time I voted. Such ignorance is unbelievable.

Can you give an example of somewhere that someone said literally ALL old people vote Tory, or voted for Brexit?

I'm not sure why you resent statistics so much. They tell us useful things. Of course there are better and worse methods and more or less reliable results, but the statistics linking age and voting patterns are very consistent, robust and reliable over time and between different sources.

I'm an oldie too, have never voted Tory in my life and may give up voting Labour because they are, for me, too far to the right. So what? Statistical averages are just that. Most people my age vote Tory, some don't. I'm one of the ones who don't.

The statistically-derived conclusions about voting patterns of different demographic groups are certainly not being ignored by the political parties, who can't afford to be as cavalier about the facts as you are, when their electoral success and livelihoods depend upon them. That's why we have a government shamelessly prioritising the welfare of retired property owners over that of younger working people. Statistics help us to understand why, so they're useful.

I thought the statistics was clear.

The more people you survey, the more confidence you have in your answer. Assuming you can get a good enough sample.

If you took 10,000 older people and 10,000 younger people, you would see a difference in voting patterns.

Of course, some younger people voted Conservative and some older people vote Labour or other parties. But there would be a difference between the generations.

Boomers (& many would have been too young to vote) back then made up a far smaller part of the electorate, it was, primarily, the war generation that decided on staying IN.
Having witnessed the horrors of war, they thought Europe might be better off talking & trading than fighting.

Anyway, perhaps the important thing here is to realise how the country (old and young) has been played, before Farage came along and stirred the pot (whilst talking millions in wages, "working" for the EU) and then Bojo seeing it as a way to power, we were all happy in the EU, we kept voting in pro EU parties and none were so pro EU as the Tories & Margaret Thatcher - despite her later dementia, voted in by, generally speaking, older people!!!

The same type of surveys were predicting an easy win for remain, which is why many remain voters didn't turn out, it was being sold as a done deal

No they didn't and they aren't surveys, some polling predicted a Remain win but the margin over Leave was never large in these.
In early june 2016, a leading polling company gave Leave a 3% lead, in mid june Ipsos had Leave in front by 6 pts.

The far left are FAR worse. Don't even TRY to pretend they're not!

Your contention requires an accurate definition of 'far left'.

It isn't 'people to the left of me'.

I've never encountered that only that tory voters tend to be older which is not the same as saying all old people vote tory.

You cannot POSSIBLY know that. You are only going on what you have read and heard in your little social circle, and the social media websites you visit. People could tell you ANYthing. That's the point of the thread, sooooooo many assumptions, with NO proof

@WhileMyGuitarGentlyWeeps Bollocks. Every analysis of actual voting shows that more people in the older demographics vote Tory, on traditional media. I'm sure Conservative party HQ would give you the same information. What a terribly deluded and strange response.

Well statistically it's true, that's why people believe it!
But I feel the same about people from.the other UK nations blaming the English for Brexit and the tories.
I live in London and we voted remain and Labour. I don't want to be included in blaming 'the English'.

Should never be forgotten that only 17.2m people voted for Brexit, out of an electorate of over 46m & a population of 70m.

So whilst the older you are, the more likely you were to vote for Brexit, it was still a minority.

We all know people, anecdotally, who buck the trend though don't we? My dad is a 75yo who left school at 15, no degree. Labour supporter all his life, ardent remainer, only voted Tory once - for Ted Heath, to take us into Europe.

But even he agrees that people his age are more likely to vote Tory.

He's a facts and stats man. The statistics on this are pretty clear.

This. The right conveniently forget the likes of the EDL or Britain First or The National Front. Lovely friendly bunch are those groups…

The extremes from both sides are best avoided.

Good for you for not voting Tory, but the FACT is that the majority of Tort voters ARE old.
yes there are some young ones, yes there are some WC ones. There are even some gay ones.
butbthe majority are old, and many are posh.

I think the 65+ group are far more likely to be 'traditional' voters. In my neck of the woods, they'd turn out in droves to vote for a sheep if it had a certain colour rosette pinned to it. I've had this debate with my sister so many times. I'm in my 50s & she's 15 years older than me. She votes for who her husband tells her to vote for & he still votes out of principle over the miners strike. Unfortunately they're the local norm, not the exception.

Older people are more likely to vote in an election compared to younger people.

So not only are they more likely to vote, they are more likely to vote Tory.

This is what makes polls interesting - as you have to understand constituency demographics.

Why would your jaw drop?

It's a fact?

Such ignorance is unbelievable.

I was born in London with an English Protestant dm born within the sound or Bow Bells and an Irish Catholic df. My df served in the British Army and remained in Germany when the concentration camps were liberated.0 He was of the belief that there shouldn't be any more wars within Europe. The EU wasn't perfect by any means but as members it was up to our government to make it work for us.

What infuriated me was that 37% of the electorate was allowed to vote the UK out of the EU when there were no agreements in place. The terms and conditions of leaving the EU were speculative. Johnson, pasty in hand, drove onto Lemon Quay in Truro in a bus promising to use the millions saved from the EU to fund the NHS and then imposed a levy to fund it. Read Johnson's entry in Wikipedia if your unfamiliar with his career and lifestyle.

So I'm a boomer who started work at 16, retiring at 67, paid tax and Ni and just as I reach 75 not only was the pension increase restricted to 3.1% but I didn't get a free T V licence in addition to the additional charge we're all paying of 20p a day increase on our electricity SC to fund the SOLR costs for the customers of the bankrupt PRIVATE energy companies. No I didn't vote Conservative

I always think this argument about over 60s is the legacy of Thatcherism. It was actually the middle class and middle aged she won over. I frankly can’t believe that I’m not the only 60 yr old who doesn’t remember the disenfranchisement Thatcher made me feel, not to mention the yrs of damage to industry, infrastructure etc.

But with regards to Brexit voting, of those surveyed over 70% had no education past GCSE if I remember correctly. Given that around half of the population have degrees now then that’s telling, is it not? I can see why someone would lie about having a degree, but I can’t see the value in saying you don’t have one if you do?

And is mostly older people who vote Tory as they are the ones who usually have the most assets - as well as pensions.

None of these surveys are entirely generalisable, no, no such survey’s are, but it paints a picture.

@mastertomsmum I’m 59. I hated Thatcher and just remember a time of gloom, fear and high youth unemployment. l lived in the north., a place she wanted to destroy.

Went on loads of political marches. I grew up I Sheffield and went to university in Manchester. No one in all my family and friends voted for her. It was a southern thing. The north hated her.