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ASPartOfMe
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11 Dec 2022, 2:46 pm

National Review
Kristen Soltis Anderson is a pollster and a founding partner of Echelon Insight

Quote:
The night after the polls closed in this midterm, when it was increasingly clear that a bold Republican victory would not be in the offing, I joined a few friends for some dinner and commiseration. As we discussed the question of what to do next, I was asked what one concrete thing I’d want everyone around the table to do that might make a difference for the future of the ideas we care about.

I pondered for a moment, not wanting to assign “homework” that would be too daunting, labor-intensive, or, worse, forgettable. So I asked for something simple.

“If you ever hear someone claiming to quote Winston Churchill saying ‘If you’re young and conservative you have no heart; if you’re old and liberal, you have no brain,’ please let them know that everything they’ve just said is incorrect.”

Churchill is not on record as ever having said it, and there’s not a shred of data to support the claim that young people are naturally progressives. Yet in a decade and a half of studying young voters, I hear this quote and its underlying sentiment constantly from those on the right.

I can think of no misconception more damaging to the future of conservatism than the idea that young people are a lost cause and we must just passively wait for them to awaken to our way of seeing the world.

And yet, if we wish to understand why Republicans aren’t notching more victories, we should consider the Right’s continuing struggles with Millennials and Generation Z.

Political-data types disagree about the impact of the youth vote on the midterms. On the one hand, some say young voters surged in their turnout and that this blocked a red wave. John Della Volpe, the longtime chief of youth polling for the Harvard Institute of Politics, projected that the jump in young-voter turnout seen during the 2018 #resistance midterm would continue. He found that 40 percent of voters under age 30 said they would “definitely” vote in the midterms, a figure similar to findings in the blue-wave year of 2018. Similarly, Anthony Salvanto, the head of elections and surveys at CBS News and one of my favorite analysts, touted youth turnout as decisive.

Supporting his analysis are the scholars at Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, who projected that young voters would have an outsize influence in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, critical swing states that have kept the Senate in Democratic control. Stories from campuses such as that of the University of Michigan add images to the data, with reports of lengthy lines to vote.

This, paired with the network exit polls’ estimates that voters under age 30 broke for Democratic candidates by a two-to-one margin — roughly the same margin by which they broke for Democrats in the 2018 midterms — all paint a picture of a generation that behaved the same way they did in a blue-wave year, even as the rest of the electorate shifted rightward. (Voters in their 40s, for instance, broke for Democrats by six points in 2018 but swung to vote Republican by seven points this time around.)

This year, Republicans bounced back to 2014 levels with older voters, doing even better with 50- to 64-year-olds nationally than they had eight years before. The GOP won seniors by twelve points, and those ages 50 to 64 by eleven. Where, then, were the 2014-style victories?

The oldest Millennials are just now entering their forties, but the bulk are in their thirties, and this is where we see some differences emerge. In 2014, Democrats won thirtysomethings by four points; this year they won them by nine. And Republicans lost voters under age 30 not by a little, but by a whopping 28 points.

I cannot state this forcefully enough: Republicans’ current standing with young voters is appalling, and it does not need to be this way

It will not be surprising to hear that, on culture, the Right is on the ropes. Issues such as same-sex marriage are considered settled by a younger generation, and shifts in young people’s views have preceded a shift among the older generations as well, with three-quarters of young Americans and now half of those over age 65 saying they think that legal same-sex marriage is a good thing, according to Pew.

The issues go beyond same-sex marriage, however, and the overall situation for social conservatives has deteriorated even in the past few years. On abortion, the generation gap was relatively muted when I first began studying the youth vote a decade ago; the winds have shifted dramatically today. In 2017, only 25 percent of those under 30 said they supported legal abortion “in any circumstance.” Today, that figure has more than doubled, to 53 percent, according to Gallup.

But crucially, it is not just on hot-button social issues that a younger generation has broken with the Right. As labor unions confronted an ageing member base, they made a concerted effort to win over a new generation. They’ve succeeded: In 2010, only 53 percent of those under age 30 had a positive view of labor unions; by 2018, it had risen to 68 percent, according to Pew. Today, there is a large gap between those over and under age 50 on whether unions are having a “positive impact on the country,” and among the young, unions are viewed as having a more positive effect than are institutions such as churches or the military.

In CNN’s pre-election polling, 70 percent of young voters — more than any other age group — said President Biden “hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems.” But when younger voters say they worry that the Biden administration is not focused enough on the right priorities, the reality is that they are likely to want bold action on issues such as climate change and gun control. That includes young Republicans, nearly half of whom say we need more, not less, action to address climate change.

Republicans do not need to become Democrats to win young voters. Before the election, plenty of evidence showed that young people were disillusioned with Democrats; copying them won’t do the GOP any good. But Republicans need to be aware of how a variety of social and economic positions are acting as roadblocks to the youth vote. They either must convince young voters that traditional conservative social views have merit or be prepared to compromise. Doing neither and writing the youth vote off entirely is a recipe for disaster.

There were some bright spots for Republicans on Election Night that are worth examining. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida also lost young voters, but by much slimmer margins than Republicans lost them elsewhere, and he outright won voters in his own 30–44 age bracket. While much national attention on DeSantis focuses on his battles over immigration and LGBT issues in K–12 public education, he has also spoken often about the need to mitigate the effects of climate change and to protect the Florida Everglades, and he has endorsed a 15-week abortion ban in Florida. He has also embraced the fact that Republicans are increasingly skeptical of corporate power, a view that Millennials and Generation Z have espoused as well.

Republicans’ poor performance with young voters is not new anymore. And with each passing election in which such voters are neglected, the GOP’s challenges have intensified. Running up the numbers with seniors is not enough, and the 2022 midterms are a startling example of what happens when Republicans assume that disappointed young voters will stay home until they’re older and magically turn conservative.

Not buying it. She is correct in that being progressive is not hard wired into people under 40. The issue is not age but generational experiences. The zoomers grew up during the great recession which put the kabosh in the idea the each generation will do better financially then their parents, and then came Trump who woke up people.

In the 60s there was a lot of talk of a generation gap. It seemed obvious, radical differences i n clothing and music tastes, and apparently politics with anti war demos that seemed treasonous to WWII vet parents. Apparent is the word. Most anti war and the more radical elements of counterculture occurred in the big cities and campuses where the media was from. Some things don’t change. When they had the whole 50th anniversary Woodstock commemorations a few years back what struck me most was people who went to the concert talking about what made the experience so memorable for them was seeing so many hippies because where they came from there might have been one or two other hippies in their town and looking hippie got you beat up.

The generation gap is more now then in the 60s. Back then they sharply disagreed on agreed upon facts. That does not exist now. For example what privilege and racism is.

Maybe the republicans can change a few points off of the zoomer progressive vote. But in order to get zoomers on their side they will have to completely abandon their base and probably “moderate” independents also.


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Mona Pereth
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11 Dec 2022, 5:13 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:
The generation gap is more now then in the 60s. Back then they sharply disagreed on agreed upon facts. That does not exist now. For example what privilege and racism is

This paragraph appears to have some words missing, and/or may contain meaning-changing typos. Could you please clarify?


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11 Dec 2022, 6:02 pm

The quote itself, while not originally uttered by Sir Winston, can be traced back to French statesman, François Guizot, who was a central figure in French politics in the 1830s and 1840s, and served as prime minister for six months between September 1847 and February 1848.  He is supposed to have said, "Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head."

Source:
 This Buzzkill Article 


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ASPartOfMe
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11 Dec 2022, 10:42 pm

Mona Pereth wrote:
ASPartOfMe wrote:
The generation gap is more now then in the 60s. Back then they sharply disagreed on agreed upon facts. That does not exist now. For example what privilege and racism is

This paragraph appears to have some words missing, and/or may contain meaning-changing typos. Could you please clarify?

Back then then people sharply disagreed about Vietnam War Policy, welfare policy, or was Nixon a fascist but people agreed what these things were.


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12 Dec 2022, 3:38 pm

I am 39 so I don't qualify as youth anymore.

If you look at voting by age, like half of all voters are over 50 or something like that ( don't have time to look it up).

What both parties have done is realized that old people are their primary audience.

If you pay attention, the one thing that both parties agree on is "don't mess with old people."

Its why DeSantis, a supposed "conservative," actually wants to increase benefits to old people.

Hoping for the <40 crowd to vote seems to be a lost cause. They get all excited when <30 is 33% turnout. Thats abysmal and depressing.



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08 Feb 2023, 8:18 pm

Over 50% of republican talking points are garbage, gun control is garbage, abortion is garbage.

Vote left or right is a vote to lose.

Third party is needed.



Aspiegaming
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08 Feb 2023, 8:50 pm

Lecia_Wynter wrote:
Over 50% of republican talking points are garbage, gun control is garbage, abortion is garbage.

Vote left or right is a vote to lose.

Third party is needed.


You forgot to add privatizing social security in the garbage pile.


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08 Feb 2023, 9:06 pm

Conservatives always had the problem of attracting young voters. Conservatism is about responsibility and the young are hard to be convinced about that.



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08 Feb 2023, 11:34 pm

^^^

Which is why I have no love for politicians of any stripe.

I’m of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction, specifically, York (and Adams) County Dutch (which is a whole different world from Lancaster County Dutch, Lebanon County Dutch, Berks County Dutch, and Chester County Dutch. The one thing that beat into my head from a very young age is shut the hell up, keep your head down, and work yer a$$ off until you drop dead, then repeat the above, ad Infinitum. I got called, and still get called, by some of my relatives, a lazy, no good for nothing fat-a$$ed motherf!ckingsonofabeeyotch for suffering burnout, bipolar I, PTSD, and a$$burgers (according to those same relatives. I’ve been burned too many times by both ReThuglicans, and Dopeycrats. Hell, I’d vote for a communist, if it weren’t for the fact they’re just as big a bunch of liars as your typical ReThuglican and Dopeycrat. As the Sage of Baltimore, H. L. Mencken, observed at one time, “Never underestimate the intelligence of the American electorate,” to which I’ll add, “Intelligence? Hell, there’s no such thing anymore in the USA! The intelligence level nowadays is that of sheep.”



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09 Feb 2023, 2:24 pm

The GOP lost youth about 30 years ago, due to the evangelicals' influence.


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