Why have millennials in English-speaking countries not shifted rightward with age?
Core argument: Millennials in continental Europe continue to drift gradually rightward like prior generations, while those in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have veered off that path, which the author calls a smoking gun.
Across continental Europe, millennials continue to follow their ancestors gradually rightward, but from the UK and US to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, they have veered away from the traditional path. This is a smoking gun. Continental multi-party systems allow voters to switch their allegiances away from anti-immigrant parties while still staying within the right or leftwing bloc in a way that the predominantly two-party Anglosphere system does not. If millennials were being alienated solely by economic injustice, we might see the same desertion of the right in Europe as in the English-speaking world. A growing cultural disillusionment makes more sense. In 2009, views on immigration were not delineated according to party or age divides. But 10 years and several culture battles later, younger adults are now far more pro-immigration than their elders, and those on the left are far less anti-immigration than the right. The same is true with attitudes to LGBT issues, where a divide between progressives and conservatives now neatly maps on to age. In both cases, conservatives successfully drove a wedge between one generation and the rest — but the cohort they discarded is growing steadily larger.

