And there are specific reasons why French youth might be angry: Youth unemployment is notoriously high, for example. After all, while youth unemployment is at 23% today, it was only a few percentage points lower in 2002, when French youth enthusiastically turned out against Ms Le Pen's father. The fact is, there's no reason to assume that younger, first-time voters will become a bulwark for liberal, centrist politics against a populist upsurge. In fact, political scientists and survey-takers have been warning for some time that we shouldn't assume that young voters will usher in a new age of social and political moderation. Some have pointed out that millennials are more extreme than previous generations; others found nearly a quarter of young French people thought only a revolution could fix things, up from 7% in 1990.

Source: Bangkok Post May 15, 2017 21:56 UTC