As people hit middle age their youthful radicalism tends to be replaced with a growing conservatism. There has been a study of the 136,000 people in the World Values Survey. The data was from 48 different countries, during five periods between 1981 and 2008:
- Participants were asked to choose whether they saw themselves as left-wing or right-wing.
- The results were then compared with their responses to more detailed questions about their views, to determine how closely the participants own perception matched their real position on the ideological spectrum.
Well-educated individuals are more likely to wrongly characterise their political positions as more left-wing than they actually are. Holding down a job and raising a family leads them to adopt a more conservative outlook.
One reason the left-intellectuals do not realise that they have shed their youthful liberalism is that they socialise with people going through the same ideological shift to the right.
These results are no particular surprise given the growing authoritarian nature of the Left both in terms of social regulation and political correctness. Like a true conservative, the Left is a great believer in ordering their inferiors about while exempting themselves from these laws.
The US voting data shows that:
- Americans who identify as independents is inversely related to age. More than one-third of the youngest Americans identify as independents, a percentage that drops steadily as the population ages.
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The percentage who identify as Republicans follows roughly the opposite pattern. Only around 20% of Americans below 25 identify as Republicans.
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Democrats are quite strong among those under age 24. The percentage of Democrats stays at the one-third mark until about age 45, when it climbs slightly and remains higher through the 50s and early 60s, hovering at around the 40% point.
Why specific people change is more interesting, because as Hayek said, aggregates conceal more than they reveal.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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