Posted on 03/07/2014 11:46:07 AM PST by nickcarraway
One of the most seismic changes in American politics over the last decade has been the emergence of a sharp generational split among the electorate. The Democratic Party owes its success in the last two presidential elections almost entirely to overwhelming support among the very young, which has overcome continued conservatism among older voters. The Pew Research Institute has dominated the field of exploring the ideological cleavages among different generations. And its latest survey shows again how the liberalism of the youngest voting cohort, millennials, remains firm, and likely to continue to recast the electorate. A few charts from the survey tell the tale. The first shows how, in previous elections, age didn’t matter very much – the young and old voted in mostly similar ways. But a generational cleavage started opening in 2004, and has remained unusually wide:
What is the source of this cleavage? Is it a mere reaction to the disaster of the Bush years, or rising social liberalism? Actually, younger voters are simply much more liberal than their elders across the board.
One way to measure the difference is to ask a generic question about the size of government. Now, there’s a venerable principle that states that Americans are ideological conservatives and operational liberals. They oppose bigger government in the abstract, and embrace the label “conservative” over “liberal,” but they tend to support specific government programs at a far higher level than these conceptual terms would imply. (Political scientist John Sides had a post yesterday updating this hardy reality.) Traditionally, self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals by a good 2-to-1, even when the partisan balance is close to even.
Millennials are not only far more likely to embrace the liberal label in comparison to voters in other generations, they’re more likely to call themselves liberal than conservative:
The same split can be seen on the question of preferring larger government or smaller government – that’s a way of framing the question that reliably produces huge majorities for small government among older voters, but amazingly yields support for bigger government among the young:
The chart above demonstrates something else. Conservatives have a double problems with millennial voters. The first is that they’re much less white than older voters, which means that, as time goes on, Republicans would need to get much higher voting margins among millennial whites merely to stay even. But the second problem is that millennial whites have more liberal views than older whites. Support for smaller government polls in the +40-to-+50 range among Generation X and Baby Boomer whites, but only +13 among millennial whites. Universal health insurance polls at around -20 points among older whites, but only -10 among millennial whites.
The conservative political analyst Sean Trende has argued that Republicans could return to parity even without repairing their standing among nonwhite voters by increasing their share of the white vote. Republicans may not have yet hit their ceiling of white support. But their most loyal white voters are aging out of the electorate (that’s a demographic euphemism for “dying”) while the white voters aging into the electorate are the least loyal to the party. And the change is happening fast – the proportion of millennials is expected, per Nate Cohn, to rise from about 18 percent of the voters in 2012 to 24 percent of the voters in 2016.
There are a few familiar, important caveats. First, Republicans are facing a midterm election they’re going to win — not only because the young tend not to vote in midterms, but also because the president’s party tends to lose midterms in general, the House map structurally favors the GOP, and this year’s Senate elections are held on overwhelmingly friendly turf for the GOP. Second, in any given election, a party can do well even if the broader structural factors are working against it. The 1970s were a terrible decade for Democrats, but Watergate helped them with the 1974 and 1976 elections. A recession or major scandal in 2016 would probably hand the election to Republicans.
But the overall picture is an electorate that is growing steadily more liberal on both social and economic policy, and whose views Republicans will eventually have to accommodate. I, for one, welcome our new liberal overlords.
Look for a new generation of young conservatives to become a bumper crop.
I ask the question in all seriousness, because the official GOP response to all this has been “well, they don’t have another Barack Obama up their sleeve.”
Social conservatism is not popular with younger voters. Or foreign interventionism. Best chance to appeal to them is with fiscal issues, but is that enough?
FWIW: Romney won the youth vote amongst all whites. So the idea that the youth vote is liberal is BS. I addition, close to 50% of these self-identified liberal youths will become conservative once they hit 30-40, with mortgages, careers, families, taxes, etc. It’s easy to be a liberal dummy when your life revolves around the next keg party.
Actually, I believe Republican gross ineptness put Obama into office. I suppose Bush acting domestically like a Democrat didn’t help either.
“That girl in New Jersey who is suing her parents is probably typical.”
Yep. And those parents unwittingly created that brat, beyond bringing her to life. Dad admits they are ‘liberal parents’ (not necessarily in the political sense) who unfortunately set up her sense of entitlement.
Bill Clinton campaign theme was “bridge to the 21st century”
is Hillary’s going to be “U-Turn back to the 20th century”?
ROFL
Young people will be TURNED off by a Hillary nomination, UNLESS it’s a BUSH she is running against. In which case, her greatest weakness will be nullified.
They’ve been saying this for three generations now because they forget that people eventually grow up and start voting conservative.
“If you’re not a liberal at 20 you have no heart. But if you’re not a conservative at 30 you have no brain.” Winston Churchill
For these folks, the #1 issue in the country today is Gay Marriage. Everything else is just noise.
Until they get married and have kids.
I voted democrat until I was 30 and Ronald Reagan came along.
Would that be young, unemployed liberals?
Like they say on campus, “I’m glad I are a college student.”
Expect to see more of this manufacturing of consent garbage leading up to the midterm elections. Its a 2 pronged attack: 1. To create conformity among the gullible youth to the narrative; 2. To demoralize the opposition.
This same thing happens every election like clock work. Its the Art of War applied in politics. Note all the sources are liberal or GOPe biased.
Well don’t bet against it or you are out 64 trillion.
Churchill stated quite well about the reasoning behind the “young” and why they are liberal.
The Pew study as I saw it covered in a different spurce cited three examples of Millenials embracing activist big government policies: gay marriage, pot legalization and I can’t remember the third.
Those first two aren’t liberal activist big government in nature (the third, tho I can’t recall it, was). The position that Millenials take on those two issues is just the opposite: that government should stay out of them.
That’s not activiet big government liberalism. It’s libertarianism.
I say that not as a defense of libertarianism, but of political mechanics and how this is MUCH more complex than the MSM is portraying in doing their victory lap.
Liberal’s own the future except for the next two elections.......oh Okay.
They can’t do it without conservative money. They are too lazy to work for their own. Most are waiting for their parents to die so they can get the inheritance, and that’s where the heftiest taxes should be levied in the future. Make them pay at least 75% of their parents’ stash for their Leftist wet dreams.
Not sure they’ve accounted for the home-schooled, highly intelligent, numerous, conservative, Rush-baby types. IMHO there is an underground group that doesn’t get counted in much.
a - very few of the 20-somethings have the skills as our public schools cater to the lowest common denominator and no longer insist on excellence and achievement; b - the Obama economy has withdrawn jobs from the marketplace; c - many of them lack the social skills or drive to go out, take rejection, and finally get a job of some kind.
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