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Young Republicans |
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Daniel Brook at the Huffington Post has an interesting piece today on the lack of young Republicans. Like many, he always thought the fact that he knows few young Republicans was a consequence of the contours of his own social sphere. But now, he says, survey data shows that only 35% of young people self-identify as Republicans, down from 55% in 1991.
Brook attributes this shift to the fear of downward mobility among young people, and a corresponding desire on their part for a more active government.
In an America in which decades of government inaction on higher education funding and healthcare now means a college degree guarantees five-figures worth of debt but doesn’t guarantee a job with health insurance, a shift to the left is a rational response. No surprise then, that The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found in a March poll that young people hold a more favorable view of government than other Americans. Young people know they need government and want it to act on their behalf.
Brook’s numbers aren’t entirely convincing, and neither is his analysis. First of all, it would be nice to know what the other 65% of youth identify as today - difficult to find, since he doesn’t cite his source on that particular claim. Are they Democrats? Independents? Secondly, the idea that 55% of young people self-identified as Republicans in 1991 raises some questions. Did they all vote for Bush in 1992? Perot?
In fact, if we trust Pew, it’s not a large majority of Americans that self-identify as Democrats or Republicans in the first place. 2003 numbers show each party hovering at around 30% of the population. That’s a lot of independents.
The larger point is, I’m still not convinced that the fact that one does not personally know a large segment of young Republicans points to a larger societal trend - rather, it may be yet another consequence of the Red State/Blue State split. Do you live in a city in a Blue State? Haven’t gone to church in a while? College-educated? It’s not necessarily surprising if your social circle doesn’t include many Republicans.
As for Brooks’ conclusion:
Party identification starts young and rarely changes. Just ask young voters’ grandparents: the generation that came of age under the last period of widespread social insecurity remains reliably Democratic to this day. If the Democrats can seal the deal with today’s young voters, the American political landscape will shift left for years to come.
I’d like to see some data to back that up, actually. My grandparents, lifelong Democrats, were disgusted by Clinton and started voting Bush. A lot of Baby Boomers who were pretty far to the Left as young people swing pretty hard Right now. I think people change their party affiliation with some degree of frequency, hence the famous truism that young people vote liberal, and older people vote conservative. Or look at the map of the 1984 elections. Where were all the lifelong Democrats that year?
I would love to see more young people flock to the Democratic party and stay there (or keep moving left). But political change isn’t something that just happens to a country, or to a political party; more likely, it seems to me, political change comes about through hard work, organization, and innovation. Smug predictions about a Democratic majority that will last for a generation seem to ignore the fact that someone will have to build such a majority.
I would explain the disappearence of young democrats as being a consequence of the Republican focus lately. 2000 and 2004 were won on values, something the Republicans have been talking about since Clinton. Yet the values they have preached aren’t really young values. Marriage isn’t really a young issue, neither is protecting children from pornography and such. The Republicans have played on older issues, which leaves young people, who are more focused on the economy, technology, and opportunity, out of the picture.
I mean, I think Brook was suggesting that there are more young Democrats now, and that confidence in the government is increasing. I think he’s only seeing part of the picture. Hell, College Republicans groups are growing on a lot of campuses. As far as party affiliation goes, that Pew graph I link to in the article shows a drop for both parties in recent years.