Winston Churchill is supposed to have said, “A man who is not a liberal at 20 has no heart, but a man who is not a conservative by 40 has no brain.” It may be apocryphal, but it certainly sounds like something he would say…and it’s true.
Case in point: several years ago, I taught a speech and debate class. Once, to demonstrate skills such as playing devil’s advocate and spontaneously organizing an argument, I told the class that I would debate each of them in turn on any subject they chose. They were free to pick any position they wanted on any topic, and (within the bounds of good taste), I would automatically be assigned the contrary view, which I would defend extemporaneously.
Some kids wanted to argue that cats make better pets than dogs, or that a certain TV show was the best, but the majority of them chose social and political topics, and the vast majority of them chose to stump for liberal positions: raising the minimum wage, reparations for slavery, universal health care, protecting abortion, unlimited immigration, going to war is always bad, etc.
It wasn’t lost on me that there was a consistency to these views: they all involved radical personal entitlements that have long been popular in the media they consume. These political positions stem from the same worldview that informs other topics that were very popular in those classes: legalizing drugs, removing curfews, etc.
I repeated the activity in a variety of other classes over a few years, always with the same results. Once in a blue moon, someone would argue for conservative things that required more personal responsibility–such as stricter school discipline or mandatory military service–but these kids were always the most independent achievers in class; not necessarily nerds, but those whose maturity made them slightly different than their peers.
Ultimately, I stopped doing this activity in favor of more traditional things to meet public speaking and argumentation requirements in classes. It just never produced the results I wanted it to–developing an objective tolerance for differing opinions and articulating them politely.
I often told classes that if they were really smart, they’d try to argue for the opposite of their feelings, and see what I could come up with for “their” side. Few ever did this. Most of them would end their arguments by saying that I was only repeating the adult cliches that were easy for me, but when I reminded them that they had each, in effect, chosen my thesis for me, I could see that it wasn’t sinking in. The whole concept of devil’s advocate is lost on a generation raised on Jerry Springer.
But I can’t help being reminded of Churchill’s saying, and of what my experience implies for politics. Simply put, young people, being relatively ignorant, easily manipulated, and governed by an emotional tunnel vision, are usually wrong. Their opinions can be trusted to be those that are most convenient for people attuned to indulgence, and are the most popular in the media.
This might be the best research any of us could do for November: talk to a lot of kids in your area and see who they like in the election. Then, vote for the other guy.
Gently Hew Stone 
This could also be symbolic of age and politics. Young people tend to want to change the world in which they live, which is a very liberal, progressive position: to make changes. Older people tend to want their world to stay the same, which is quite a conservative position: to maintain the status quo.
The younger generations have generally been the ones who force their leaders to change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Regardless, the parties themselves have stances which appeal to different age groups.