Western Europe identify as Christians, while larger proportions of the electorate have become increasingly sceptical of religion and the highly conservative values it promotes more generally. This might also be explained by the fact that Christian democratic parties tend to represent more rural interests and West European countries are increasingly urbanising, but we will come back to this shortly. Equally, citizens with higher levels of education are more inclined to be progressive, tolerant of out-groups, give higher priority to cosmopolitan values and advocate for minority rights as part of a larger adherence to equality. This aligns less with the populist radical right. Moving on to the age distribution of those rejecting different political parties, Figure 27 paints a similar picture to Figure 20(the correlation between age and support for the same party families). That is, the proportion of voters who reject the party families under consideration increases over time. More specifically, we notice a more considerable number of people who reject these party families amongst the 65+ cohort, while fewer of them come from the 25- to 44-year-old cohorts. Even though part of this might be related to the aging of European electorates, it is nonetheless an important trend. In conjunction with Figure 20, this might indicate that younger cohorts are more likely to be positive partisans and, thus, express an explicit liking of certain parties, whereas older cohorts are more likely to be negative partisans and, thus, express an explicit dislike for certain parties. At the same time, we notice there is – once again – little difference between party families. Figure 27. Distribution of age groups amongst voters rejecting different party families in Western Europe. Social democrats Christian democrats Liberals percent of frecuency 0 20 40 60 80 100 percent of frecuency 0 20 40 60 80 100 percent of frecuency 0 20 40 60 80 100 -2001 1996 -2006 2001 -2011 2006 -2016 2011 -2021 2016 Conservatives -2001 1996 -2006 2001 -2011 2006 -2016 2011 -2021 2016 Populist radical right -2001 1996 -2006 2001 -2011 2006 -2016 2011 -2021 2016 Population average percent of frecuency 0 20 40 60 80 100 percent of frecuency 0 20 40 60 80 100 percent of frecuency 0 20 40 60 80 100 -2001 1996 -2006 2001 -2011 2006 -2016 2011 -2021 2016 -2001 1996 -2006 2001 -2011 2006 -2016 2011 -2021 2016 -2001 1996 -2006 2001 -2011 2006 -2016 2011 -2021 2016 Youngest- 24 45-54 25-34 55-64 35-44 65- Oldest The transformation of the mainstream right and its impact on(social) democracy 55