Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has spoken at McGill University and the University of British Columbia in recent weeks. The choice of these locations was not an accident.
If the Liberals are to improve their standing in the scheduled October election, let alone contend to form a government, they have to charge up young Canadians to vote.
Getting Canadians in the 18-to-30 group to the ballot box has proven quite difficult. Young people are turned off by partisan politics. Lower overall voter turnouts in recent elections are largely explained by the precipitous decline in voting among the young. Thats bad news for the Liberals and great news for the Conservatives.
Pollster after pollster has confirmed that the Liberals do better than the other main parties among the young, whereas Conservatives do best among the over-65 set. Since a much higher share of older Canadians than younger ones vote, this gives the Conservatives a big advantage. The future belongs to the young, but the present belongs to the old.
Pollster Angus Reids latest survey on the matter gives the Liberals 34 per cent of voters in the 18-34 age category, compared to 29 per cent for the New Democrats and just 22 per cent for the Conservatives. Among over-55 voters, the Conservatives lead the Liberals 38 to 32 per cent, with the NDP at 22.
Ipsos Reid has the Liberals seven points ahead of the Conservatives among 18-34-year-olds, but the Conservatives lead by four points among voters over 55. Nanos Researchs Party Power Index, which blends voting intentions and prime ministerial preferences, shows the Liberals ahead among 18-to-29-year-olds but trailing among those over 60.
An instructive, albeit small, poll of two Conservative-held ridings (Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette and Brandon-Souris) by Probe Research in Winnipeg found the Liberals ahead by 17 points among 18-34-year-olds, whereas the Conservatives led by 12 points among those over 55.
Getting young people to vote has long flummoxed political parties (especially the Liberals and New Democrats), civic-society activists and political scientists. Mr. Trudeau needs to solve the puzzle.
Younger voters dont see voting as a civic duty, the way many of their elders do. Perhaps they dont yet have a stake in society, and so feel government to be not terribly important. They get their information from nontraditional sources, which are hard to penetrate with political messages.
If some young people are interested in politics, in the widest sense of the word, they may express it by supporting particular causes. Or they may be too wrapped up in their studies or early careers to worry much about the faraway and abstract stuff of politics.
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Trudeau seeks the fountain of youth