Republicans have a young people problem!

The 2004 election was the first in which most millennials — defined by Pew as those born between 1981 and 1996 — could vote. These fresh voters went for Democrat John F. Kerry by a margin of 56 to 43, a shocking 15.4-point swing from the overall results of the election. This cohort had watched their peers do the majority of the fighting and dying in Iraq and recoiled at Bush’s staunch cultural conservatism, including his advocacy for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The Great Recession, which also began under Bush, added economic misery to the disastrous war, doing possibly permanent damage to the economic prospects of the whole generation.

The result has been that the 2004 election results have become the new normal for the GOP: 18- to 29-year-olds have broken decisively for Democrats in every national election since, something which is without precedent in the polling era. In voting for the House, the closest Republicans have come to winning 18- to 29-year-olds was losing them by 10 points in 2014. This cohort voted Democratic by an incredible 35-point margin in 2018, and surveys suggest Trump is set to lose these voters by at least 20 points in November, if not more.

What’s staggering is that these aren’t the same voters: 2004’s 18- to 29-year-olds now make up the majority of the 30-44 age group. And their politics have remained consistently Democratic, with little to no erosion from youth to early middle age.

Until recently, these developments, while unusual, were explainable by the scholarly finding that one of the few factors that can break the dominant influence that parents have in forming one’s political attitudes is the performance of the party in power when he or she turns 18. Yet, until the coronavirus outbreak, Trump was overseeing a robust economy in peacetime — and still repulsing Generation Z, or Zoomers, those born after 1996, in droves. That’s because these Americans were driven left not only by policy disaster, but also a yawning gap between the GOP’s positions and attitudes and what young people want.

millennials and Zoomers are substantially less White than their elders and are turned off by the national GOP’s incessant culture war. They are more likely to believe that Black people face discrimination and to want major changes in policing and criminal justice policies. Additionally, for two decades, according to the long-running Harvard Youth Poll, they have been more likely than older Americans to view health care as a right, to support same-sex marriage, to oppose overseas adventurism and to believe that corporations and the wealthy should pay more in taxes. But instead of trying to appeal to them, the GOP has only moved rightward on these issues and others, and grown more strident, accelerating the flight of young people from the party.

This should be causing a much bigger freakout among Republicans, because there is almost no evidence that any of these young Democrats will get more conservative with age. On the contrary, the scholarly consensus is that partisanship hardens with time, and only truly disjunctive events, like a divorce or a move to a radically different part of the country, seem to have any discernible impact on voting and partisanship. And these kinds of changes do not generally happen frequently enough to cause large-scale shifts in generational partisanship.

The GOP has survived as a national force this long only because millennial turnout was dramatically lower than that of other age cohorts. But that’s beginning to change, too. In 2018, the combined turnout of those born after 1964 exceeded that of the boomers and their elders, the Silent Generation. Millennial voting doubled between the 2014 and 2018 midterm elections, and Zoomers debuted at 30 percent turnout in 2018, seven points higher than the numbers for early millennials in 2006.

Thirty years of partisan gridlock has been sustained by substantially higher turnout among older Americans. Those voters won’t be around forever, and the GOP’s mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic has (almost certainly temporarily) given Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden an edge with the elderly. But unless the GOP figures out a way to gain a substantial edge with a large bloc of incoming 18-year-olds, the party will find that its preferred tactic of voter suppression will not be sufficient to avoid a long epoch as a national minority party destined to suffer repeated landslide drubbings, possibly beginning in November.

Were they publishing about the "Hispanic problem" the Repubs had a few years ago?

Republicans are the disgusting pig party.

Disgusting OLD pig party

In a nutshell, Republicans tend to look backward, Democrats tend to look forward.

The Republicans' response to that is to ban abortion and chip away at gay rights. They've already made an enemy for life with the Millenials. I guess they want to do the same with the next group.

Oh yeah and to deny climate change. That's going to win the youngsters over.

Young people today are also not seeing the benefit of a robust economy like older generations did. Republicans want to keep them drowning in debt.

I find it....amusing isn't the right word...that anyone thinks this matters. Trump and Co. are now President for life and every American election will be rigged now that the Orange Mafia has control of the Supreme Court.

I hope they guillotine all the Republicans.

It won't be a problem when we control the courts and make martial law look like anarchy.

Losers always turn conservative when they don't enjoy life and don't want to see others happy. Same as Muslims. Bitterness and resentment are the catalyst.

R13 You didn't bother reading the article did you?

Sure, Svetlana R10

The problem isn't that the GOP doesn't have anything to offer younger voters, it's that those young voters are now turning middle aged and they still have nothing to offer them.

[quote] Yet most Republicans are in denial about the scale of the problem,

You think?

[quote] They've already made an enemy for life with the Millenials.

Fox news still writes slam articles on millennials. You'd think they might want to absorb some of that humongous population.

I don't think they realize the extent to which younger generations hate them.

We’ve been hearing about the young people problem for a decade now. Young people don’t vote so the GOP keeps winning

Republicans put people like Ben Shapiro, Jason Miller, Ivanka, Don Jr., Charlie Kirk and Keighleigh Mac on display and convince themselves they've won over young people.

Let them have their delusions.

Republicans love young cock just fine! No problem here.

[quote]Same as Muslims. Bitterness and resentment are the catalyst.

Oh sure, I mean it's not like constant meddling in that part of the world and wars based on lies leading to the death and destruction of nation after nation had no part in it.

You simplistic moron. None of what you see now was happening before now.

any* part

R19 You're another idiot who didn't bother to read the article.

[quote] Millennial voting doubled between the 2014 and 2018 midterm elections, and Zoomers debuted at 30 percent turnout in 2018, seven points higher than the numbers for early millennials in 2006.

Conservatives don't need a large, young demographic to dominate politics, when they have geographical advantages. What's it matter if a majority are liberal minded, when they're all squeezed into a few blue states/ cities? Or when they aren't reliable voters.

There's also people living forever. My entire area is older people (50s-90s) and they aren't dying any time soon. For every 2 births, there's 1 death. First time in human history the birth over death rate has been so lopsided. For conservatives to dwindle enough to matter, we'd still have at least 30 years to go, if young people stay on a rising liberal trajectory.

Don't forget the party almost as shitty as conservatives (their 1st cousin) libertarians. A lot of people have assumed techbros are liberal, especially the ones in power -- they are not. Zuckerberg, Musk, Gates, etcetera, donate to whatever party benefits them. It ends up equaling out (because they're libertarian.)

I'd factor in the young leftists too, that are so far left, they think of themselves as pure socialist and end up scorning the Democrats, creating fissures in the party. While they're still considered left, therefore aren't a help to Republicans, they aren't exactly a help to Democrats either.

Oh and while religion is dwindling, if we expect immigrants to boost declining repopulation numbers, depending on origin, they could ignite religious numbers in this country down the road.

I think the best case scenario would be a restructuring of elections and multiple parties. That and reexamining the current system of electoral votes.

BUMP

Moderate democrats have a young people problem as well, but to a lesser extent. Baby boomers, democrat & repug alike (viewed as a generational whole, as a group), through their disproportionate size and deathgrip on power have stagnated public policy in ways that seem increasingly downright jaw-dropping to subsequent generations.

We just had a presidential debate between two men verging on death, arguing about which one is more racist (the answer to that argument is "Yes" btw).

That being said, I'm not a destructive fool, so of course, nothing will stop me from casting my ballot for Biden and democrats up-and-down the ballot.

[Sidenote though: looking at datalounge does often feel like traveling in a time machine into a sausage party full of guys yelling about 'androgynous beatniks' calling themselves queer and sporting shameless funky hairstyles and 'urban youths' and their rebellious jazzy music, flashy zoot suits, and malodorous wacky tobbacky! ... In other words, this place practically radiates an eyebrow-raising level of rage at everything that is currently counter-culture ... A little more self-reflection about stagnant ideology even among the liberals here might be called for... just sayin'.]

The fact that yesterday's minorities are becoming today's majorities is a statistical phenomena. It was predicted 20 years ago based on the youth and child bearing potential that Hispanics would overtake white populations in the US. There is no way to alter this mathematical occurrence. If republicans believe they can go back to all-white Andy Griffith days, they are sadly and factually in error.

I'm contending that there is no way that the US will have a white majority going into the future. (Unless they do a mass extermination the likes of Hitler, the US is destined to become a multi-racial society). There Is simply no other outcome. Period. I believe the Trumptards think otherwise, but that tenet will be statistically incorrect.

R28

It is inevitable. That's why they're increasing barely hiding explicitly anti-democratic values and practices. "Get rid of the ballots"

Many young people get more conservative as they age ... what do you think happened to all those flower children from the 60s and 70s?

^^^Ah-hah...not when they are fucked overfinancially from the beginning of their lives. That shit sticks around for life.

R30

Many of them became our asshole parents and elders who voted against our interests and left us in an environmentally-ruined, diseased wasteland 'gig economy' currently overseen by an aspiring dictator who's a fan of among other things asbestos, pussy-grabbing, and kidnapping immigrant children.

Those ex-hippies made active choices to turn their backs on their values and create this dystopian present. It's not like it was an inevitable consequence of neurological decay.

R30, there's this thing called social media where young people are exposed to different things including people from various backgrounds. If you think conservatism can survive when much of it is based in scapegoating people based in racism and bigotry, you'll be in for a rude awakening when those young people get older and don't feel compelled to immediately hate people based on what they are.

Same as it ever was.