Voters under forty back independence by a wide margin. Voters over sixty-five oppose it by an equally wide one. That gap is not narrowing.
One statistic from this election cycle’s polling deserves more sustained attention than the immediate horse-race coverage of seat counts and party positioning has generally given it: the genuinely stark generational divide on independence itself, with voters under forty backing independence by somewhere around fifty-eight to sixty-two percent, while voters over sixty-five oppose it by a remarkably similar margin in the opposite direction, somewhere around sixty-two to sixty-six percent against. This is not a small or marginal gap. It is one of the most structurally significant facts in Scottish politics right now, and I do not think either side of the independence debate has a genuinely satisfying answer for what it actually implies over any meaningful time horizon.
For the pro-independence side, this generational pattern offers an obvious, seductive kind of long-term optimism: simple demographic replacement, as older, more heavily unionist cohorts are gradually succeeded by younger, more heavily pro-independence ones, would seem to suggest that independence support should mechanically strengthen over coming decades regardless of any particular election’s immediate result. I think this reading, while not entirely wrong as a matter of basic demographic arithmetic, is considerably less straightforward than it initially appears, because political attitudes, including on constitutional questions, do not always remain fixed as a single cohort simply ages in place, and today’s enthusiastically pro-independence thirty-year-old is not guaranteed to hold identical views at sixty.
For the unionist side, meanwhile, this same generational data poses a genuinely uncomfortable question that I do not see addressed nearly often enough in mainstream unionist commentary: why, specifically, does support for the union skew this heavily toward older voters, and what, if anything, does that pattern suggest about whether the fundamental case for the union is actually connecting with younger Scots on its own merits, versus simply reflecting older voters’ greater attachment to a constitutional arrangement they have lived under considerably longer and have, correspondingly, more accumulated personal history invested in preserving.
I think the honest answer here is probably some genuine combination of both dynamics, generational political attitudes that may soften somewhat as today’s younger cohort ages, layered on top of a genuine, substantive difference in how each generation actually relates to the underlying constitutional question, shaped by starkly different formative political experiences, a younger cohort that came of political age amid Brexit, austerity, and a broader sense of Westminster dysfunction, versus an older cohort with direct lived memory of a pre-devolution Scotland and, in many cases, a personal or family connection to the 2014 referendum campaign that first crystallised many voters’ current constitutional positions.
What I find genuinely under-discussed in most current analysis is the specific policy implication this generational gap creates for both sides’ near-term strategy. If demographic replacement really is gradually strengthening the pro-independence position over time, does that give nationalist strategists a rational incentive to actually delay a referendum, betting that time itself is doing useful work on their behalf, rather than pushing for an immediate vote under conditions that remain, this election’s record pro-independence parliamentary bloc notwithstanding, still genuinely close on raw current polling? And does the same demographic logic give unionist strategists a mirrored incentive to actually push for an earlier vote, before the generational tailwind currently working against their position has the chance to fully compound?
I do not think either side’s current public positioning fully reflects this specific strategic logic yet, though I suspect it is lurking, at least implicitly, somewhere behind closed doors in both the SNP and Scottish Labour’s actual internal strategic planning. It is, I think, exactly the kind of quietly consequential structural dynamic that deserves considerably more careful, sustained analysis than the immediate seat-count coverage of any single election cycle typically provides.
I intend to keep tracking this specific generational data closely across future polling, watching in particular whether today’s younger, heavily pro-independence cohort actually holds its current position as it ages, or whether, as some political scientists studying comparable generational patterns elsewhere have suggested might happen, constitutional attitudes formed in one’s twenties and thirties prove considerably less durable across an entire lifetime than the current, static snapshot of this year’s polling might suggest on its own.
There is a further complication worth naming honestly, one that neither side’s current strategic thinking seems to have fully absorbed yet: this same younger, pro-independence cohort is also, by most available polling, the cohort showing the least enthusiasm for any of Scotland’s established political parties as institutions, SNP included, a genuine scepticism toward traditional party politics more broadly that could, plausibly, translate into considerably lower turnout among exactly the demographic both the SNP and the broader independence movement are currently counting on to eventually deliver a winning referendum majority through simple demographic replacement.
A generation that supports independence in principle but does not reliably show up to vote for the specific parties currently carrying that cause forward is a genuinely different strategic asset than a generation that supports independence and turns out reliably at the ballot box, and I think this distinction between attitudinal support and actual mobilised electoral behaviour deserves considerably more careful attention from nationalist strategists than the current, fairly straightforward demographic-replacement optimism I have seen circulating most commonly in pro-independence commentary this week.
More from this author at Morag Sinclair, prat.uk.