The youth vote is turning right

Young people are supposed to drink a ton, have a lot of sex, hang out with their friends at every opportunity and vote for the left. Today’s young don’t live up to the stereotype. According to polls, they are one of the most responsible generations on record. Across the West, the share of young adults who binge-drink or who are sexually active has fallen to a new low. Teenagers spend far less time hanging out with their friends than their parents or grandparents did. They even seem to be defying political expectations – though their recent drift to the right has, in its own way, succeeded just as well in horrifying their elders.

Last month, for example, a group of fashionably clad vacationers at an upscale bar on the German island of Sylt shocked the country by singing along to an old tune by DJ Gigi D’Agostino with new lyrics: ‘Ausländer Raus’ (‘Throw out the Foreigners’). After going viral, the song has done the rounds. Young Polish and Austrian fans united to sing the slogan before a recent match at the Euros. Some of this is a form of trolling and, at times, linguistic incomprehension. Last week, the German police, who have absurdly treated such incidents as a criminal matter, went to interview one set of alleged malefactors, only to find they were Eastern Europeans who didn’t speak enough German to understand the words. But while the significance of viral trends shouldn’t be overstated, electoral results show the drift to the right may be all too real.

This year, 16- and 17-year-olds in Germany were allowed to vote for the first time in elections to the European parliament. Left-wing parties from the Greens to the Social Democrats championed lowering the voting age because they expected to benefit.