Impressive “disaffiliation” of 18-24 years highlighted by a study

Young adults often do not recognize any proximity with a party or a political trend, says a study by the Montaigne Institute carried out with 8,000 of them, including “Le Monde” publishes the conclusions. At the presidential approach, near a young one on two can not or does not want to position themselves.

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The question bounces again at the approach of each election deadline: will we see the young generation doing the displacement even in the booth? The presidential election of April 10 and 24 is no exception. While more than one-fifth of the 18-24 year old had shunned the polls in 2017, a Inquiry entitled” Plural youth “ Posted Thursday, February 3 by Sociologists Olivier Galland and Marc Lazar, on behalf of The Montaigne Institute, a Neoliberal Think Tank, scrutinizes a broad spectrum of political and societal concerns and question, in hollow, the possibility of a record of abstention.

“An important part of young people does not recognize any proximity with a party or a political tendency, either by lack of knowledge, either by disinterest and perhaps also by rejection” advance Olivier Galland, director of research emeritus at the CNRS, and Marc Lazar, Professor of Sociology and History at Sciences Po.

On the basis of a panel of 8,000 young people aged 18 to 24, constituted by Harris Interactive, and two other “mirror panels” of 1,000 respondents each, corresponding to the generation of parents and grandparents Sociologists have highlighted the “impressive political disaffiliation” of a large part of this age group. This “disaffiliation” is even what differs most than 18-24 from the two previous generations, enforce the authors of this survey that Le Monde could consult in preview.

87% d Abstention to the regional

From the flow of statistics gathered, some better illustrate that others the phenomenon. Thus, 43% of young surveyed say they do not have any specific ideas to position themselves on the left-right scale, and 55% can not indicate partisan preferably, or because they do not know the parties (36 %), either because none corresponds to their choice (19%). And this applies to all political courses: the case of Europe Ecology-the Greens (EELV) is “symptomatic”, notes the investigators: although the ecology is a recognized concern as major by this category of population, barely more From one in ten declares to feel close to this party.

“My name is Liam, I am 23 years old, I am a student in art and I am from Saint-Claude (39) , a small town of the Jura. Already as a black man, I do not feel at all represented. (…) I’m tired of justifying my transidentity. At the political level, I believe that candidates come to Care to understand the stakes of networks and that politics can also interest young people. In reality it is not the youth who lose interest in politics but the policy that has been a very disinterested in youth. (…) “Samuel Gratacap

Generation effect or age effect – In other words, lack of citizen experience? Mm. Galland and Lazar ask the question. They are not the first to do it: while the abstention of the aged 18 and over has been observed for at least twenty years, other researchers and historians have, before them, sought explanation slopes in the default of Citizenship education at school. Or in the crisis of great political representations and in the impoverishment of the following partisan narratives.

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