There Is Still Hope...Millennials Ahead Of The Curve

Our nation's future will ultimately depend on the generational cohort generally born between the early 1980's to the late 1990's.  They are referred to as Gen Y's or the Millennial generation.  In other words, this is the group of young people under the age of 30 all the way down to the middle school ages right now.  Right now they are on the hook to bail us out with the future taxes they will pay to pay for the entitlement system that has been built over the last two generations.  However, if there voice is heard loud enough in 2012 they could become a major force in shaping the future agenda on taxes and spending.
Michael Barone is one of the most astute political observers in America.  I first became acquainted with him in the early 1980's when I was introduced to "The Almanac of American Politics" which he authors every two years with the change in each Congress.  It is a must-have for any political junkie.

He has an interesting article in Real Clear Politics which looks at recent polling data on the fairly significant shift in the political identification of white Millennials.  This is a group that voted 66-32 for Obama in 2008.  At that time they also identified themselves as Democrats over Republicans by a 60-32 margin.

However, white millennials have been moving away from President Obama and the Democrats in droves since that time as Barone explains.

The Democratic edge in party identification among white Millennials dropped from 7 points in 2008 to 3 points in 2009 to a 1-point Republican edge in 2010 and an 11-point Republican lead in 2011.

An 18 point shift in party identification in 3 short years is a seismic shift!

There have been shifts of similar magnitude among whites who are low-income, who have no more than a high school education, and who live in the Midwest.It's not hard to come up with plausible reasons for these changes.


Obama campaigned as the champion of "hope and change" in 2008 and assured crowds of young people that "We are the change we are seeking."But the change they have seen is anything but hopeful. Youth unemployment rates have been at historic highs. Young people have seen their college degrees produce little in the way of job offers.They are choosing more often to keep living with their parents. From the Obama Democrats they have gotten only a promise that "children" up to age 26 can stay on Mommy and Daddy's health insurance plans.


In the wake of the 2008 election, I argued that there was a tension between the way Millennials lived their lives -- creating their own iPod playlists, designing their own Facebook pages -- and the one-size-fits-all, industrial-era welfare-state policies of the Obama Democrats.

Instead of allowing Millennials space in which they can choose their own futures, the Obama Democrats' policies have produced a low-growth economy in which their alternatives are limited and they are forced to make do with what they can scrounge.

There is little evidence that the Millennials believe their plight can be relieved and opportunities opened up by slapping higher taxes on Bill Gates and Steve Jobs or by restricting deductions for corporate jets, as Barack Obama urged in his Monday night speech calling for tax increases (although Senate Democrats gave up on them) in debt-ceiling legislation.

The intended purpose of legislation like the stimulus package and Obamacare was to improve the situations of those least able to take care of themselves -- the young, the less educated, the low-skilled. But it is just such groups that, the Pew Research Center numbers show, have been moving away from the president's party. An instructive achievement, no? 

Another article in The Wall Street Journal by Karlyn Bowman and Andrew Rugg, "The GOP's Secret Weapon: Flower Power"  reviews the data that shows that the Baby Boomer generation continues to get more conservative as they get older.

The shifting views of the liberal and libertine '60s generation aren't new. It started becoming more conservative some 20 years ago.

Consider a 1986 poll for Time Magazine conducted by the firm Yankelovich Clancy Shulman. It reported that 64% of 30-40 year olds said their political views had become more conservative since the 1960s, while 27% said they were less so. Forty-one percent described themselves as conservative, yet only 28% said they were conservative in the '60s and '70s. Of those who had moved rightward, the top explanation they gave for their shift was assuming family responsibilities. More of those 30-40 years olds still described themselves as Democrats (38%) than Republicans (24%). But the trend, according to the pollster, was in the Republican direction.

The University of Michigan's American National Election Study provides additional perspective. In 1972, 51% of eligible voters in the cohort born between 1943 and 1958—the front end of the baby boom—called themselves Democrats, and 29% identified as Republicans. In 2008, those responses were 45% Democrat and 48% Republican.

The ideological identification data from the surveys are even more striking than party affiliation. Thirty percent of today's near olds called themselves liberals in 1972. In 2008, 12% did. The proportion calling themselves conservative rose to 46% in 2008 from 21% in 1972, according to the survey.

A study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center also shows a substantial increase (18 points) between 1974 and 2010 in conservative identification for the 55-64 (near old) cohort. They also moved 11 points in the Republican direction during that period.

This all reminds me of a famous quote from Winston Churchill when he commented,

"If you're not a liberal at twenty your have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain."

The millennials appear to be a little ahead of schedule.  There is still hope...