It’s been a quieter week and a half in World and Local Politics, hence the reason for the length between my last post and now but as the year heads into February things are starting to kick back into gear and we head into a year with two very important global elections and quite a few Australian Elections too. In this blog I will analyse the South Carolina Primary Results which gave a large endorsement to Joe Biden in a state that in 2020 resuscitated Biden’s Run and launched him into the Oval Office. Meanwhile a lot has been said recently about the Youth vote and whether it is getting more progressive so in this blog I will analyse that and see how much merit is in that statement.
So Joe Biden won South Carolina and it wasn’t even close, he ended up with 96.1% of the vote which is a great result for him. Marianne Williamson got 2.1% and finished second while Dean Phillips who in Dean Phillips mind was going to push Biden early on got 1.7% of the vote and finished a disappointing third. The turnout which was 16% in the 2020 race of the registered Democratic voters in 2020 was only 4% of the Democratic registered vote this time which would be of a slight concern to Biden in that the much worried about enthusiasm for the candidate is not there this time. That being said 2020 was a contested primary and a win is a win is a win and this was a blowout win to the nature that despite the lack of enthusiasm for Biden may give Biden some much needed momentum heading into the General Election. And lets be clear this is al about the General Election now and Biden who is energised every time he discusses Trump called him a loser who will lose again this November. I know there’s been scuttlebutt about Michelle Obama running for the Presidency under the Democrats name but that’s a pipe dream that isn’t going to happen. Now South Carolina is an important state because despite it being a solid Republican state it has a large African American population and in 2020 they voted 90% for Biden in South Carolina. Given that African Americans and particularly younger male African Americans are deserting Biden in droves according to the polls this is an important win for Biden in a population that he needs to re-energise to win in November. This week some Democrats got excited with National Polling from YouGov showing a 1% lead to Biden over Trump in the general election but before you get carried away there’s a few points too make, firstly its one poll and every other poll this week showed Trump leading Biden by a non-insignificant amount, secondly Biden will possibly win the National vote thanks to running up the score in California and New York, its the swing states that will decide this election and they still show Trump with a solid lead. Immigration is a hot button issue in America at the moment, and that favours Trump who has promised a harsh and possibly illegal approach to Immigration should he win the White House in November. Its a concern to me that Trump is now pushing Republicans to scrap an Immigration Bill before the Congress that would be a lot harsher than anything currently enacted for the political win of this still looking like a shit show come November. For me the Republican’s could be overplaying their hand here, in that in chasing a political win the Democrats can say well we tried to fix this issue but couldn’t because of the Republicans playing politics on this issue.
Now onto Youth Progressiveness and this would seem like a natural conclusion, young people have always been more progressive than older people and that’s the ballgame and to a point that’s fair to assume, what I’m more interested in here is the pattern that younger people appear to be staying more progressive as they get older now rather than becoming more Conservative as they age as has been the case in previous generations. Indeed the saying that has always held to me growing up is if you are under 30 and vote Conservative you have no heart and if you vote Left wing over 30 you have no brain. I think the reason for this past shift in attitudes on the whole as you age is as you age you tend to have more assets you want to conserve and that tends to see you vote more for Economic issues than Social Issues that may have driven you more when you are younger. That trend seems to be changing though, particularly as Home Ownership is increasingly becoming a pipe dream for younger people and so as a result people are more likely to vote for Leftwing parties even as they age. The real worry for right wing parties is younger woman who are really moving to the left and this is a trend that is showing up not just in Australia but across the world in Democratic societies. The real trend though is a sign that as younger woman are becoming more Educated than their previous generations they are voting further left and are staying left even as they age. This is a trend across the world for those who live in big cities which has been trending to the left in droves in the last few years as that is the home of the young college voters. The real interest to me is that there’s a lesson here for Centre Left Governments as well, not just the far right and centre right parties. There’s a growing trend that the younger generations aren’t just stopping at centre left parties but are going more progressive too far left parties. Be that the Greens in Australia, and like minded far left candidates of major parties across the world. It’s intriguing to me then that as we are getting further along the line that we aren’t seeing the death though of far right parties across the developed democracies, indeed what we are seeing is far right parties having a re-emergence across the globe. The reason for this is that the polarisation of the society on the whole of both sides of the political spectrum means that people are digging further into their trenches than previously. It’s interesting that while both Men and Young Women are trending left, there’s a growing smaller population particularly of young men that you’d think would also go further left are embracing the far right parties, be it Donald Trump garnering more young African American Men than usual in the USA or young uneducated men embracing Peter Dutton more than usual in Australia. And I think that’s also worth mentioning in the shifts to the right, whereas in the past uneducated working class people would be more likely to vote for left wing Socially Progressive parties, they seem to be now more open to embracing further right socially conservative and aspirational economic parties now to the right of centre.
Thanks for reading my blog, stay tuned next week for my next blog on the first week of the sitting year for Australian Politics.
Political Musings from the Man Down Under 