The specter of society’s shift to the right, including young people, is coming back to haunt Western societies. Will Quebec follow the trend? The question should bother the three political parties (CAQ, PLQ and QS), which are holding general meetings at the end of the week.
Italy, twice civilizing, has been the political laboratory of the West for centuries and centuries. And it continues. The right-wing populist and media billionaire Silvio Berlusconi beat the American right-wing populist and media billionaire Donald Trump to power by 30 years. The nationalist conservative Giorgia Meloni took over as leader of the country in 2022. Her “syndrome” is leaving its mark well beyond the Italian peninsula.
In polls, young Italians still predominantly declare themselves progressive, European and green. All the same, 20% of 18-34 year olds voted for Fratelli d’Italia and for its leader, Mme Meloni, who is the same age as PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon. This is 6% less than the average of voters, but by adding the votes of the allies of the Lega and Forza Italia, we arrive at a third (33%) of youth support for the national-conservative movement.
This so-called post-populist, identity-based and anti-immigration wave has already reached Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. It also seems ready to flood Germany and France.
In France, the National Rally, chaired by Jordan Bardella (he will be 29 in September), is now the first choice of a third (32%) of French voters aged 18 to 25 for the European elections from the beginning of June. For “first-time voters”, the identity party comes far ahead of the left of France Insoumise (17%) and crushes the Socialist Party (8%). Candidates linked to President Macron are doing even worse, with 6% of their promises at the polls.
In Germany, a survey has just established that 22% of citizens aged 14 to 29 say they are ready to choose Alternative für Deutschland, a radical and populist right-wing party. This proportion was 9% just two years ago. Voting intentions for the Greens fell from 27% to 18% during this time.
In the United States, a poll from the Institute of Politics at Harvard University establishes that President Joe Biden is favored by less than one in two young people under the age of 30 (45%) and the ex-president Donald Trump, by one in three (37%). Among young whites, the Democrat’s advantage is only 3 points. And the international struggle is heading to the right!
And the situation here?
Is Quebec a distinct society from this point of view? “There are signs showing that Quebec is perhaps slowly starting to join this global trend of a shift to the right among younger people,” responds specialist in political opinions and parties Éric Bélanger, full professor at McGill University.
Pollster Jean-Marc Léger observes the shift in his data. “In Canada, Pierre Poilievre is ahead of Trudeau among young people, whereas before, young people were on the left – and even very much on the left,” he points out.
From the end of the Quiet Revolution to the end of the 20th centurye century, young people voted more for the PQ. The power of attraction of the social-democratic and sovereignist party “waned a little” after the lost referendum of 1995. “So much so that at the end of the 2000s, we no longer observed a strong link between the age of an individual and their electoral preferences,” says Mr. Bélanger.
“A change began to take place in 2012. Young people turned massively to QS and its progressive values,” he continues. The student crisis has politicized a part of the youth in a more progressive direction corresponding to the QS platform. Especially since the party’s current co-spokesperson, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, is the former spokesperson for the main student union Printemps érable.
Another sign of change appeared 10 years later, in 2022. “We then see an affinity emerging with the Conservative Party of Quebec of Éric Duhaime,” summarizes the university specialist. We are talking about a training that occupies a niche opposite to that of QS. And now, the PCQ has a fairly young clientele, just like Québec solidaire. »
In the latest Léger survey dated May 13, the two parties are neck and neck in total voting intentions (12% each), but QS receives 32% of support from 18-34 year olds and the PCQ , 14%. The advantage is therefore still on the left, but the competition is emerging at the other pole.
The reasons for the change
Jean-Marc Léger puts forward three major causes to explain the ongoing change, which sees young people now as divided as the rest of the electorate.
First there is resentment against the system. “The first phenomenon is the anger that is expressed on the left and the right,” said the pollster. Right-wing parties channel frustrations around the notion of identity. The left promotes very inclusive policies. When immigration becomes the number one issue, with effects on the whole of society in health, education, housing, many young people, like the rest of society, can therefore reject the principle of inclusiveness. » A majority of Canadians (58%) and Quebecers (61%) would like the country to welcome fewer immigrants, according to a Léger survey from February.
The second factor refers to the “liberticidal” management of the pandemic by the State.
The third cause concerns the group effect of the generation of millennial voters. “Because of their numbers, their education, their technological knowledge and their wealth in debt, young people are becoming the center of political interest. They are taking the place of the baby boomers. All the issues become those of young people. »
Future or new German voters aged 14 to 29 talk about economic insecurity (including inflation), wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the housing crisis and the massive influx of immigrants. France is also bathed in a feeling of crisis and astonishment. The surveys highlight the “strong pessimism” in the face of gloomy prospects.
The gender variable
Éric Bélanger has just completed a forthcoming article on the rise of Éric Duhaime’s conservatives in the 2022 Quebec elections. “We see that the PCQ has succeeded in gathering support on the basis of these issues, but that it has also succeeded to attract voters with more traditional moral values, a lesser appetite for climate change mitigation, and a populist and cynical view of politics,” says the abstract of the scholarly article.
“The party also seems to be particularly popular with young male voters outside the greater Montreal area,” we can also read.
This gender variable muddies the waters even more. A sort of great ideological war between the sexes has stabilized for several decades — since the second feminist wave, in fact. Political scientist Ruth Dassonneville, of the University of Montreal, examined data from 36 OECD countries, which showed that women from Generations X, Y and Z are adopting the positions of their mothers and grandmothers. She also highlighted differences from one country to another: in some countries, men follow women to the left; in others, both sexes turn to the right; elsewhere, the gap between one and the other gender is widening.
This is the case in the United States. American men lean more to the right, women more to the left. And the young electorate also follows this division, accentuated since the decision of the country’s Supreme Court to give states the right to set rules (including very restrictive ones) on abortion. This is also somewhat the case here, with the “angry young men in Quebec”, according to the formula of a sociologist cited in Mr. Bélanger’s article.
However, and it must be emphasized, here as elsewhere, angry or not, men or women, right or left, young people vote little. So their voices necessarily carry less weight. It may also seem quite paradoxical to see political parties courting this segment of the electorate who are abstainers…
“They vote less, but young people provide energy in an electoral campaign,” corrects Mr. Léger. Very often, the vote of young people leads to that of older people. We saw it clearly with Jack Layton [et le NPD de la vague orange en 2011], when all of a sudden, the enthusiasm of the youngest was transmitted to the entire population. Justin Trudeau benefited too. Often, young people give the momentum. »