The Age Divide in UK Politics: A Working Paper Prepared for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust

In this paper, we update a previous analysis of the age divide in British politics to examine the trends over recent general elections. We revisit our analysis by interacting turnout by age with other key variables, such as gender, education, ethnicity and housing tenure, before examining how support for the main political parties varies by age. In the final section we respond to a tendency to explain away age differences as either simply about education or homeownership by interacting age, education and housing tenure to
create 8 sub-groups of voters. We examine their voting patterns and their policy
preferences to assess the relative independent weight of each factor in determining the main divides of our politics and the possible direction of travel in future elections. We conclude with a discussion of how the age divide in UK politics is theorised in the political science literature and where it could and should go next.