FiveThirtyEight: "The Rand Paul Will Win Over Young Voters Myth"

[Rockefeller GOP]

DeadPrez has the ShadowStats to prove Rand Paul is really up 20 points in unskewed polls because 98% of Americans are unemployed and the price of milk is really $5,000 a gallon. You uninformed voters don't know.

I really don't like when people on this site have misleading avatars then constantly bash the party it's for.

[King]

It's not bashing to state the fact that Rand Paul is not going to win the youth vote.

[henster]

Nobody really cares about civil liberties issues and foreign policy is in the back of most voters minds their concerned about matters here at home. The past few elections have been dominated by the economy and social issues and I think Paul's conservative views on many social issues will turn off a lot of younger voters.

[Rockefeller GOP]

It's not bashing to state the fact that Rand Paul is not going to win the youth vote.

This is not the only post of yours I took into consideration.

[© tweed]

But...but...but...muh marijuana legalization

if he did come straight out for full-fledged marijuana legalization at the federal level, or at least the complete removal of marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, he might be able to tap into something among the 18-29 demographic.  I doubt he will though

Not really, hardly anyone is a single issue pro-pot voter.

possibly not, but there's never been an opportunity before.

[King]

It's not bashing to state the fact that Rand Paul is not going to win the youth vote.

This is not the only post of yours I took into consideration.

I'm open to conservative ideas whenever they've had any. 2005 was a long time ago, though.

[free my dawg]

The notion that people will discard their beliefs on abortion, gay rights, healthcare, the Civil Rights Act, the environment, etc. just because of muh foreign policy is hilarious.

Look at how True Leftists talk up the Libertarians - who openly want to destroy the social safety net - because of MUH NSA and MUH DRONES.

Yeah, I don't get it. In my experience with True Leftists, their main problem with the Democrats tends to be that they prioritize social issues over economic ones, which is a fair concern. But if that's the case, you'd think libertarians would be their worst enemy.

But... drones?

Believe it or, some people care more about not blowing up villages in the Middle East and violating the Constitutional rights of countless people than they do about Social Security. You might not like it, but sometimes people have different priorities than you.

Like allowing private businesses to turn away darkies because "muh private enterprise"? I'd think that's a tad more important than droning a terrorist enclave in Yemen or collecting telephone metadata, but that's just me.

Aww look at you thinking libertarians accept black people are human.

Stop being a twat.

Libertarians come in two flavors.  The first flavor of libertarian is a racist, misogynist, upper middle class white male who seeks to further buttress his privileged position in society.  He is an unapologetic reactionary who loves to thump the constitution proudly, nostalgic for a time where rich white men like himself had the freedom to kill and enslave black people as well as beat and rape women without the government stopping them. 

The second flavor is a white, nerdy teenage boy who posts on Reddit.  He happens to stumble across the libertarianism wiki page or a Stephan Molyneux video on YouTube and is too mentally underdeveloped to understand the fallacious nature of the ideology and is too ignorant to understand basic economics.  Most of these people will grow up to become Republicans.

I think a lot of people run across many of the second kind of person on the internet and assume, "wow, there are a lot of libertarian millennials!" when in fact it's just a few loud, ignorant children on the internet.  This article demonstrates how, luckily, few millennials actually support theocratic race-baiting neoconfederate political dinosaurs like Rand Paul.

I'm not denying that at all (in fact, I agree for the most part). I just don't like people putting half-assed HERE IS A FACT I KNOW strawmen in play.

[CapoteMonster]

Regardless of your side in the argument, the generalizations of entire groups of people on here is getting out of hand.

[Likely Voter]

Let's face it, Rand Paul's young fans are primarily white males, who are just a fraction of the Youth vote. The younger the demo, the more of them are non-whites.

[Deus Naturae]

Let's face it, Rand Paul's young fans are primarily white males, who are just a fraction of the Youth vote. The younger the demo, the more of them are non-whites.

Obviously his fans are not going to provide him with enough votes to win. I don't think that anyone has argued that he was going to win based on his fans alone. Most people aren't even arguing that he would win a large majority of young voters, just that he would be able to make inroads with that demographic due some of his unconventional positions. Same goes for blacks (even if you think he's a racist, Rand is bound to do better than the average Republican with this demographic).