Background: Harvard University’s Institute of Politics did a study on Millennial (18-29 year old voters), and came to some interesting conclusions:
Republican and Democratic leaders should find little solace in the results. The survey found that 33 percent of young Americans consider themselves Democrats and 24 percent identify with the GOP. The largest and growing segment is independents, 41 percent of the total.
Democrats’ advantage among young voters is fading. Among the oldest Millennials (ages 25-29), Democrats hold a 16 point lead over the GOP – 38 percent say they’re Democrats and 22 percent call themselves Republicans. Among the youngest of this rising generation (ages 18-24), the gap is just 6 points, 31 percent for Democrats and 25 percent for Republicans.
Um. Republican leaders should TOTALLY find solace in the results. That age-based 10 point shift towards the GOP pretty much gut-shoots one of the Democrats’ long-term demographic strategies*. And that’s just voters who are 18 to 24 now. There’s going to be more of them in 2016, and I can’t see them being any happier with Barack Obama, the Democrats, or Obamacare…
Moe Lane
PS: Yeah, I’m ignoring the fact that the article is ostensibly about how Millennial voters hate Barack Obama now. Who cares if they do? They typically don’t vote all that much in midterms anyway and Obama’s never running for office again. By 2016 the eventual Democratic candidate will be doing his or her level best to avoid saying the name ‘Barack Obama’ at all.
PPS: I don’t need to win Millennial voters. Dragging down the Democrats’ share of their vote will do nicely.
*The shrinking Latino birthrate (both inside and outside the country) is what’s gut-shooting the other one.
One important quibble, Moe .. the Millenials in the 18-ish age cohort I’ve talked to are far, *far* more libertarian-leaning than their elder siblings.
.
Now, the GOP is better placed than the Dems to take advantage of this, but .. shifting toward a libertarian stance is not going to be an easy thing for certain (cough Santorum cough) GOP elements to take.
.
Mew
Indeed, but it should be done in measures, Cuccinelli was one of those candidates who could do it ( and he did win the 18-24 year olds by 8 points)
But then Libertarians decided to run a phony libertarian/ libertine in the mad dash for third party viability (that never happened because he couldn’t get 10%) all of those people voting for Sarvis must feel stupid now.
Not mentioning the previous president’s name didn’t really help John McCain, Al Gore, or Jerry Ford.
–
Goes to show how popular Reagan was, huh?
Didn’t help Nixon in 1960 either.
1960 there was actual verifiable voting fraud.
Also Democrats held a massive registration advantage of Republicans. And had ever since FDR.
It wasn’t until AFTER Reagan that party identification started normalizing.
It’s 11pm in Germany where I’m reading this now– this is an awesome bed time story. Thanks.