The British Conservative Party

[CO-OWL]

The Tories rightward swing has made them un-electable in the eyes of most people in the U.K, and their voters are getting older every year (the average age of a Tory member is over 65... and it's almost that grim with their voters. Not as extreme a pattern as the CDU in Germany though...).

I don't know who told you the myth that the CDU is dying out (I suspect Lewis Trondheim ), but I can assure you it is not true.

It is true that the CDU gets their best results in the group of voters >60, but in most cases the differences among age groups are not very dramatic.
Moreover, in the last few elections the age structure of the SPD voters was quite similar to that of the CDU.

For the Greens it's almost the other way round. They do much better than average among younger voters (<30, 30-44), but are very weak among those over 60. (Though I guess, this will change with the Green core voters getting older...).
FDP does slightly better among younger voters in recent elections.


The following results are taken from exit polls by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen: http://www.forschungsgruppe.de/Ergebnisse/Wahlanalysen/


PARTY  age groups: <30/ 30-44/ 45-59/ >59

General election 2002

CDU/CSU  33/34/39/45
SPD          37/39/37/38
Greens      11/11/9/5
FDP           10/9/7/6


State Election Lower Saxony 2003

CDU          48/47/47/50
SPD          29/34/34/34
Greens      9/10/7/6
FDP           8/6/9/9


State Election Bavaria 2003 (My favourite one )

CSU          59/58/61/66
SPD          13/16/19/24
Greens     12/12/8/3


State Election Hamburg 2004

CDU          42/41/45/58(!)
SPD          27/29/32/30
Greens     20/20/14/3


EU Election 2004

CDU/CSU   39/38/41/54
SPD            19/20/24/25
Greens       17/19/13/4
FDP             9/7/7/5


State Election Thuringia 2004

CDU            42/41/45/48
SPD             12/12/14/20
PDS             22/26/29/26


State Election Brandenburg 2004

CDU 16/-/-/-  Overall: 20
SPD  24/-/-/-  Overall: 32
PDS  23/-/-/-  Overall: 28
DVU  13/-/-/-  Overall: 6


State Election Saxony 2004

CDU          39/41/43/47
SPD             8/8/8/8/15
PDS           16/21/25/26
NPD           17(!)/-/-/-   Overall: 9.

[CO-OWL]

That election had some funny sides...my favorite bit was the poll (a week before the election)saying two-thirds of Bavarians hoped the CSU would not get a two-thirds majority in parliament, which it looked headed for at the time and did, indeed, get. Yet, it only got one-third of the registered vote (as turnout was abysmal) - so two thirds of Bavarians did indeed not want them to get a two-thirds majority!? (In truth, of course, many non-voters said they didn't care less and many CSU supporters said they didn't really want it to go over two-thirds).

I remember that poll, too. It made me think FDP and Freie Wähler would do much better, but they didn't even break 4%.

Turnout was indeed very low with an expected safe CSU victory and discontent with the SPD at its peak. They even finished third in some districts behind the Greens or the FW.
CSU just got the 30% of the population who would vote for it under (almost) any circumstances and some additional votes.

[CO-OWL]

the CDU is not dieing out, o/c - it's still much stronger than the Tories, across the board. But it's heavily skewed towards the generation now 60-80, and actually has been throughout BRD history

Well, given the demographic change in Germany if the CDU could maintain their strong showing among the 60+, electoral success would be a sure thing...

But with the "68ers" and post generations getting older I guess there will be some changes in the voting behaviour of the 60+.
The Greens are likely to make the biggest gains.