A thought for Sunday: the march of demographics and the 2018 midterms
(Dan here…Better late than never!)
A thought for Sunday: the march of demographics and the 2018 midterms
Unfortunately, while dividing age cohorts into only four may make for a clean graph, it paints with far too broad a brush, and has led to some misguided generational bashing online. So let’s take a more granular look.
There is lots of evidence that most people form their bedrock political outlook in their late teens. Basically, if at age 18 or so, there is peace and prosperity, you are likely to embrace the ideology of the party of the President. Conversely, if the economy is performing poorly or there is social upheaval, you are likely to embrace the ideology of the opposition.
Importantly, when we slice age cohorts more finely, we find two things:
2. the outsized conservatism of the age 60-80 cohort most likely to vote in midterms is a happenstance of the last decade or so, and will have faded significantly by election day this year.
The below graph dating from 2012, which breaks down voting cohorts by the Presidency during which they turned 18 years of age for the election from 1994 through 2010:
Quick, which is the most liberal demographic? Obviously, it’s the Greatest Generation, isn’t it?
They remained durably Democratic until they passed away (even now there are still about 2 million alive).
So much for turning more conservative with age!
Next, comparing the first four elections with the four most recent elections (3 vs. 3 in the case of the Clinton cohort), only 4 demographic groups become more conservative over time: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy/Johnson, and Reagan/Bush. Three — Nixon, Ford/Carter, and Clinton — have voted more Democratic over time.
The generational pattern continued in the Presidential election of 2012. The Greatest generation was gone, and the mid-Boomer Nixon cohort stands out as a Democratic leaning demographic:
The twhree graphs together show that, confounding received wisdom, over time it has been the Gen X and late Boomer cohorts who came of age from 1975-92 who are the most reliably conservative groups, whereas the mid-Boomer cohort that came of age during the Nixon years has been reliably liberal. [UPDATE: Early Gen Xers may be the exception to the rule, as in 2014 and 2016, they trended blue vs. their earlier solid red record. Possibly the GOP’s embrace of rabid retrograde social reaction has been too much for them. The remaining cohorts all continued to vote in 2014 and 2016 in accord with their earlier records.]
With no other information at all, the fact that the deep blue Greatest generation passed from the scene after 2006, and were replaced with more conservative cohorts in the age 60-80 group that votes most heavily in midterms, suggested that those two elections would skew more deeply “red” than any other recent elections.
This year all the Truman cohort and the first 1/4 of the Eisenhower cohort are over age 80, when presumably frail health causing voting participation in midterms to decline precipitously, and have been replaced in the most heavily voting bloc by the “blue” Nixon cohort. Meanwhile the blue Clinton cohort is moving past age 40 and can be expected to vote in greater numbers, at a rate roughly equal to that of the Truman and Eisenhower cohorts.
That alone should shift the demographics of this year’s midterm electorate more bluish.
But wait, there’s more! Finally, let’s take into account the Grim Reaper. Here’s the Census Bureau’s year by year look at population cohorts dating from 2016 (h/t Calculated Risk):
There is a very consistent die-off in each birth-year’s population of about 100,000 per year beginning in their late 50s.
That means that in the last four years, roughly 3.2 million of the “red” 8 million Truman cohort and another 3.2 million of the “red” 12 million Eisenhower cohort who were alive in 2014 have passed away.
Put this all together and the basic fact is that the 2018 voting population is going to be considerably more liberal and Democratic than the 2014 population, even if Millennials turn out only in percentages consistent with younger voters in other midterm elections.
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The sour implication is very clear: Obama broke their hearts. After promising “Hope and Change,” aside from healthcare (not their core issue!) he mainly delivered a nip and tuck around the edges of the neoliberal consensus.
In order for Millennials to turn their ideological choices into reality, they are going to have to take a few centrist Democratic scalps.
Advances in health care are responsible for both Fox News and Trump.
I agree with the teen imprinting period. A formative 70s theory was “What You Are Is Where You Were When” (Updated and released again in 2014). Just being alive confirms Massey’s theory.
However, even though demographics plays a part, maybe major, in elections, the demographic tend is to become independent and not identify for a party. 2017 numbers are I-42%, D-29% and R-27%.
As the article concludes: “… After surging towards the Democratic party in 2008, they deserted the party in droves over the next 6 years, turning into independents instead.
The sour implication is very clear: Obama broke their hearts. After promising “Hope and Change,” aside from healthcare (not their core issue!) he mainly delivered a nip and tuck around the edges of the neoliberal consensus.
In order for Millennials to turn their ideological choices into reality, they are going to have to take a few centrist Democratic scalps.”
I agree, with the exception of the CENTRIST target. I would change that to LEFTIST. Obama was far from a centrist, and the current path for the democratic party is to move even further left. Which to this upper quadrant man appear to be the wrong direction to attract the great 42% Independents.
Independent voters are simply people who need to pump up their egos while being able to avoid contribution requests. Waste of time to talk about, let alone pursue, these mythical independent voters.
“The dramatic rise of the independent voter is one of the popular narratives of our tumultuous political times, not just in California but nationally. It’s also highly misleading.
Mass defections from the two major parties would seem understandable, coinciding with a growing disaffection with any number of once-respected institutions — Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the Roman Catholic Church, the FBI and on. For many, the political parties are emblems of a detested establishment that routinely leaves them choosing at election time among a set of lesser evils.
But the ascendance of the independent voter isn’t what it seems. Indeed, the notion that legions of voters are shunning Democrat and Republican alike to boldly march down a path of utter neutrality is pretty much a myth.
We all like to believe we are our own free agents. What we like to say is we call it as we see it.
Peter Hart, Democratic pollster, on the prevalence of self-identified “independent” voters.
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In 2016, 34% of Americans described themselves as politically independent, more than the 33% who aligned with the Democratic Party and 29% who identified with the GOP, according to a national Pew poll. And yet Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton — two of the most widely disliked candidates ever nominated by a major party — collectively received 94% of the popular vote.
California voters, faced with a similarly unpalatable choice, behaved no differently.
In 2002, the widely loathed Democratic Gov. Gray Davis faced a hapless and unpopular GOP challenger, Bill Simon Jr. Still, the two combined to receive just under 90% of the gubernatorial vote. (Davis, of course, was booted from office less than a year later, in what amounted to a do-over under California’s recall process.)
The political system is heavily biased to favor the two major parties, and Democrats and Republicans alike do all they can to preserve their combined hold on power.
But scratch not too far below the surface and you will find most independent voters are, in fact, partisans who routinely vote with one party or the other. They simply prefer not to be affixed with any political label; don’t we all cherish our autonomy and freedom to exercise our wise, unparalleled judgment?”
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-on-politics-column-20180301-story.html
EM, i do believe the LATimes more accurate than the poll I cited.
Two points:
From the 2014 more granularl chart, the millenials can’t be concluded to be an exception to the trend, but rather they are statistically a change in the trend (2nd order regression model) to either a “flatter” trend at 12% to 15% blue bias or the start of a reversal.
The millennial generation is poorly defined by the 33 year old and younger age cohort and better defined by age 28 and younger. This is based on the sharp distinction between a continuation of the Gen-X trend and the marked shift toward center after that. That definition would put them at the age of majority After Bush II’s 1st term and Before Obama’s 2nd term.
Those terms indicate a major disappointment of conservatives with Bush II during his 2nd term a huge disappointment with Obama after his 1st term. e.g. disappointments with establishment politics on both sides of the isle. In a word a huge dissolution with both parties.
That fits with the lies about WMD’s and causes of Great Recession being Bush’s admin blame coming to light, as well as Obama’s 1st term attempt to find middle ground with the opposition .. an abject failure.
Thus the mid-terms in 2018 and election in 2020 will have a huge effect on whether the D’s remain stuck with a 12% – 15% preference advantage or are able to continue to make gains in the blue direction. after an “interrupt” caused by dissolution with both establishment parties.
I also note that the conservative establishment has already formed their alternative further right party (aka the tea-party far rightists) to break from the conservative establishment
The liberals haven’t found their party’s establishment break alternative to the left yet though. It may be that what occurs is that the centrist R’s will shift to the left as centrist D’s to isolate themselves clearly from the far right.. at least temporarily. In that case the D’s will get stuck without an alternative to the establishment party.
But I don’t think the nation is interested in centrist gov’t BAU anymore. I think it’s been on a path to greater and greater ideological divisions over race, future white loss of supremacy, inclusiveness v exclusiveness, labor v capital benefits, US militarism, etc. We’re heading toward more hardening of mutually exclusive directions.
A great write up of the demographic shifts that are likely to impact the upcoming elections. I can see where there is room for disagreement and discussion around the last statement: whether millenials will want the democratic part to move more toward the center or the left. I can also see the answer being a bit of both: the millenial generation is much more socially liberal than previous generations but, I think, also has a chance to demand more fiscally responsible (dare I say, conservative?) government. Or perhaps they won’t demand it so much as have it forced upon them by our growing debt-to-GDP ratio: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-to-gdp
Either way, I wonder if the divergence of millenials from previous generations indicates an upcoming major realignment of what it means to be a democrat or republican.
Soul:
If you keep kicking a dog eventually they will bite. The load of student debt, lack of jobs, and different views and ways of doing things as the largest cohort will certainly make waves in the upcoming years.