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Right Wing Students

Anyone else find it odd how many Tory supporting students you meet these days?

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Reply 1
Students are more likely to be from the sort of backgrounds and places that are Tory supporting, not that shocking.
Reply 2
Why should it be odd?
Reply 3
I was preparing for this to be a get-together :sad:
Reply 4
Original post by brennan94
Anyone else find it odd how many Tory supporting students you meet these days?
I read an article in the economist which was saying that this generation as a result of the government deficit is more free market orientated in their political views. However younger voters are and always have been generally more left wing than the rest of the population, as people grow up they tend to shift further to the right.
Original post by brennan94
Anyone else find it odd how many Tory supporting students you meet these days?


The only thing that worries me is young people conforming to the status quo of voting either New Labour or Tory.
(edited 10 years ago)
I'd imagine it would depend very greatly on where you go to uni. I'd imagine somewhere like Oxford would have plenty of Tory supporting students. The same probably wouldn't be true for a university in the north of the country.

I've found also that students tend to have high aspirations to go into high-earning jobs and that sort of demographic typically favours the Conservative mindset. But maybe that changes once they've left uni and realize how bad the job market actually is.
Reply 7
It completely varies by campus, and students can arrive politically-neutral and be influenced by their surroundings too.

We have lots of right-wing students in Nottingham.

Compare that the Birmingham or UCL though.. or almost anywhere in Scotland actually.
Original post by roh
Students are more likely to be from the sort of backgrounds and places that are Tory supporting, not that shocking.


It's not just students, it's everybody else too. In polling, Conservatives are quite consistently ahead of Labour by about 10% in the 18-24 group.
Do you mean school/college or university ?

Quite often political opinions are like your religion. You usually end up the same as your parents, because you have been taught that that is the correct way of thinking, from an early age.

My geography teacher who is a tory councillor basically told me that my mum (who is a labour councillor) indoctrinated me with socialist ideals because I come from a biased family. I told him that my dad is a tory, so overall thats quite a balanced parentage. I then went on to say how him and his wife being tory councillors, is clearly a bias for their children, who I suspect will grow up believing in capitalist ideals. That shut him up :h: He really hadn't though it through ...

If this IS true and you look at the schools/colleges that have a high proportion of students go on to uni, rather than finish education. They tend to be students from schools in more affluent areas and private schools. The parents of which are more likely to be right wing.
Reply 10
I dunno, I'm from the South Wales Valleys... and I just find it really odd considering how much hate for Thatcherism and Tories in general round here, how many people my own age support it. I mean the increase in tuition fees I thought would be enough to put students off them.
Reply 11
Original post by JamesGibson
I'd imagine it would depend very greatly on where you go to uni. I'd imagine somewhere like Oxford would have plenty of Tory supporting students. The same probably wouldn't be true for a university in the north of the country.


I've heard that they are heavily outnumbered and even picked upon, so much so that they tried to form groups similar to LGBT groups to combat this.
Reply 12
Young people are more right wing today, I guess it probably has to do with the fact even the labour government they experienced were pretty right.

I think you will find it varies greatly depending on the geographic region someone is from though, the vast majority of young Tories seem to be from the South.
Reply 13
Original post by Clare~Bear
Do you mean school/college or university ?

Quite often political opinions are like your religion. You usually end up the same as your parents, because you have been taught that that is the correct way of thinking, from an early age.

My geography teacher who is a tory councillor basically told me that my mum (who is a labour councillor) indoctrinated me with socialist ideals because I come from a biased family. I told him that my dad is a tory, so overall thats quite a balanced parentage. I then went on to say how him and his wife being tory councillors, is clearly a bias for their children, who I suspect will grow up believing in capitalist ideals. That shut him up :h: He really hadn't though it through ...

If this IS true and you look at the schools/colleges that have a high proportion of students go on to uni, rather than finish education. They tend to be students from schools in more affluent areas and private schools. The parents of which are more likely to be right wing.



I have to agree with your argument too. What I find really odd is the voters such as my grandfather who consistently vote labour yet have values that are more right wing than Thatcher, almost UKIP-esque. That generation confuse me.
Original post by brennan94
I dunno, I'm from the South Wales Valleys... and I just find it really odd considering how much hate for Thatcherism and Tories in general round here, how many people my own age support it. I mean the increase in tuition fees I thought would be enough to put students off them.


The people currently in education don't remember thatcher though. Although it is still surprising. I mean on the news lately, they've been praising her, but surely the adults who can remmeber her and were affected by her policies, saying how they hate her would sway the young people more ?

There's a thread about this somewhere, asking if the tuition fee rise and bedroom tax is enough to persuade people who've never voted, to vote labour. But people were pointing out that most students will be better of under the new system. Unless you earn millions, you won't pay it all off, so actually many people will only be paying a bit more than what the old fees were anyway because they get wiped after so many years anyway.
Original post by redferry
Young people are more right wing today, I guess it probably has to do with the fact even the labour government they experienced were pretty right.

I think you will find it varies greatly depending on the geographic region someone is from though, the vast majority of ALL Tories seem to be from the South.


Corrected :tongue:
Reply 16
Original post by brennan94
I have to agree with your argument too. What I find really odd is the voters such as my grandfather who consistently vote labour yet have values that are more right wing than Thatcher, almost UKIP-esque. That generation confuse me.
You mean like old labour/socialism , older generation politics?
Original post by brennan94
I have to agree with your argument too. What I find really odd is the voters such as my grandfather who consistently vote labour yet have values that are more right wing than Thatcher, almost UKIP-esque. That generation confuse me.


Plenty of people just vote Labour because that's what they've always done, or everybody does. (Probably Tories too).
Reply 18
Original post by nExow
You mean like old labour/socialism , older generation politics?


Well yeah, the generation that voted old labour in, yet seem to have irrational fears of foreigners, "illegal immigrants nicking our benefits", and favours lower taxes and a smaller government. I really don't understand those people either.
Reply 19
Original post by brennan94
Well yeah, the generation that voted old labour in, yet seem to have irrational fears of foreigners, "illegal immigrants nicking our benefits", and favours lower taxes and a smaller government. I really don't understand those people either.
It's been like that for centuries now, generally the older generation are more right wing socially, economically it varies. It's interesting how over a 'long period' of time,take 100 years of any stretch of British political history, we have moved further left on social issues such as clamping down on racism etc, whilst economically we've had much more variation, we used to have government national monopolies on tea and sugar whilst not enforcing a minimum wage.
(edited 10 years ago)