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I've heard it claimed that the voting patterns for those aged 80 and older tend to differ from those age 65-79.

That the fact that they are of an age old enough to remember the war, the days before the Attlee reforms etc. tend to make them a lot more left leaning on issues such as Europe and the NHS than the general 65+ age bracket that most pollsters tend to group people into.

However, as much as I am sure I have read this in the past. I cannot for the life of me find any research about it. As said every single voter break down seems to just leave the 65+ group intact; I guess because they want to try and keep approximately equal age groups across the field rather than looking at the very niche true-oldies group.

My question: is anyone aware of any polls or other research that looks into a difference in the way people vote between the 'young old' and the 'old old'?

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ICM have been doing polls that break out the 75+ age bracket from the 65-74 bracket. The most recent such poll, conducted from 12-14 January, shows that the 75+ bracket is considerably more likely to vote for the Conservatives and considerably less likely to vote for Labour than the 65-74 bracket.

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Source: https://www.icmunlimited.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Voting-15thJan18_pv-only-BPC.pdf

It is worth noting that the handful of ICM polls before this show similar trends.

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  • Thanks. I do notice a small turn away from UKIP with the oldest people. The context in which I can seem to remember this was brexit. Recall anywhere they divided the younger-old and the old-old on this issue? – the other one Jan 27 '18 at 20:51
  • According to the same poll, the 65-74s voted 58-40 to leave, whereas the over-75s voted 62-34 to leave. – Joe C Jan 27 '18 at 20:54
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    @JoeC It might be worth noting that, given the relatively small sample sizes for individual age bands, that observed difference over the referendum could well be random noise. – origimbo Jan 28 '18 at 21:30

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