In the recent British elections, radical leftist Jeremy Corbyn won the "coveted" youth vote handily but was nevertheless crushed by the Conservative Party in a historic landslide.

Lord Ashcroft Polls, which surveyed 13,000 voters on election day, found that while Boris Johnson's Conservative Party won both men and women and all socioeconomic groups, Conservative support depended on the age of the voter.

Among the 18–24 age group, Labor won by a margin of 57% to 19%.  British writer James Delingpole noted, "If these kids had had their way, then the world's fifth-largest economy would have been reduced within a few months to the status of Venezuela-style basket case, with private property confiscated, freedom of speech muzzled, taxes rocketing, Jews persecuted, terrorists appeased, national security surrendered."

Delingpole observed that rapidly expanding school attendance has created "a powerful electoral bloc of brainwashed little Marxists."  Delingpole is surely correct in calling for Boris Johnson to counter the Marxist influence at the universities by appointing conservatives to top jobs in the academe and by defunding SJW courses like gender studies and environmental sciences, which provide students with "nothing of intellectual value, only a spirit of a resentment combined with misplaced crusading zeal, and which render students entirely unfit for any career outside the taxpayer-funded bureaucratic state."

With each increasing age cohort, however, Labor did less well, winning the 25–34 and 35–44 age groups by narrower margins.  Among voters aged 45–54, Conservatives won by a margin of 43% to 35%.  And in the oldest age group, those over 65, Conservatives dominated by a margin of 62% to 18%.

That Labor did so well among voters below the age of 45, yet were decisively beaten in the election overall, shows that the importance of the "youth vote" may be overestimated.

For one thing, older voters are more likely to show up at the polls.

For another, the appeal of a platform promising "free stuff" paid by someone else may begin to wane with age.  And the appeal of conservatism increases among those who feel they have something to conserve.  That something doesn't just mean material possessions: it also means family, culture, and a sense of tradition.

It remains to be seen whether in the U.S. and U.K. the natural tendency to grow wiser and thus more conservative with age will be overwhelmed by an educational system determined to indoctrinate students at a young age and keep them leftists for life.

To understand this is to appreciate the real motivation behind Bernie's and Sandy O's pitch for "free" college tuition: it is a means of leftist indoctrination at taxpayer expense.

You can follow Nicholas J. Kaster on Twitter.