British Prime Minister Theresa May’s bid to consolidate power has backfired. Her Conservative Party lost its governing majority in Thursday’s snap-election, forcing it to form a minority government with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, which gained 31 net seats while Conservatives lost 12, appeared to get its boost from young voters. That assessment, if accurate, confirms a trend in American and Western European politics toward a radical turn among young voters that could over the next decade further undermine the political center.

What’s motivating these young leftists? The evidence points to underlying economic factors, and suggests that these voters will have a lasting influence on the fundamental structure of Western economies.

First, the numbers: According to a Sky News exit poll, Labour candidates won 63 percent among voters 18 to 34 years old. The Tories took a dismal 27 percent. Turnout among 18-to-25-year-olds was estimated to be between 66 and 72 percent. In 2015, when Labour ran a centrist campaign under Edward Miliband, only 45 percent of these voters turned out. In this year’s vote tallies, Labour did best among those seats that had highest percent of 18-to-24-year-old voters.

In the Democratic primary last year, progressive Bernie Sanders won more 18-to-29-year-old voters than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined. In France this year, in the first round of voting among eleven candidates, leftwing maverick Jean-Luc Mélenchon was far ahead among the 18-to-24 year olds with 30 percent of their vote. In last March’s Dutch elections, with eleven parties contesting, the Green Left Party, led by a 31-year-old parliamentarian, won 35 percent of the 18-to-34 year old vote, considerably more than any other party.

In Italy, according to polls taken two years ago, Beppe Grillo’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement is the favored party of 18-to-29-year-old voters. Spain’s Podemos, which is now the country’s third largest party, was founded by political scientists who were in their early 30s. The party’s chief theoretician, Inigo Errejon, is 33. When I attended a conference in Madrid last year hosted by Europe’s parties of the left, the median age of the attendees looked to be under 30 years old.