When did Generation X outliberal the Baby Boomers?

[Bandit3 the Worker]

A few days ago, I saw a new Gallup poll that says each age group is more liberal than the one that's next oldest. In fact, Millennials are more likely to identify as liberal than conservative.

I know this trend is probably a decade old, but when exactly did Generation X become more liberal than Baby Boomers? Years earlier, like when I first started voting, it was always reported that Generation X was more conservative than their Baby Boomer parents, by far. The Baby Boomers protested against the Vietnam War, but people my age (born 1973) were acting like Ronald Reagan was their grandpa.

I know a lot of this was based on economic issues, but some of it was social issues too. A lot of Bush's "values voters" were roughly my age.

When, why, and how did Generation X finally get more liberal? Is it because now a lot of them have kids in college, and they have to pay for it, so now they finally realize how the real world works? It used to be that they'd say, "OK, grandpa," if I'd start talking about labor unions, but now they support unions too. I'll go with the theory that a lot of them just didn't understand the real world before, but now they do, because they've gotten wiser.

But why did the Baby Boom get more conservative? Or were they already more conservative than they appeared?

[Rockefeller GOP]

Well, the older Boomers would have been more liberal than the tail end, no?  Maybe more of them have died?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

When they stopped having Gen X end at 1976.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

They aren't.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The Baby Boomers were never 'liberal' in any real way.

[hopper]

The Baby Boomers were never 'liberal' in any real way.

Yeah but they voted for McGovern in '72.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The real answer is that Gen X (and especially Gen Y) is less white and less economically secure than the Boomers.  And people do tend to get somewhat more conservative (not necessarily in a political sense but in a broader sense) when they get older.

Which illustrates the severe limitations of using "generations" or other arbitrary groupings of huge cohorts of people as a basis for electoral analysis.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

The real answer is that Gen X (and especially Gen Y) is less white and less economically secure than the Boomers.  And people do tend to get somewhat more conservative (not necessarily in a political sense but in a broader sense) when they get older.

I saw a study about 5 years ago that said people actually got more liberal as they got older. It said that an older person who appears very conservative may have once been even more conservative.

[Cory]

But why did the Baby Boom get more conservative? Or were they already more conservative than they appeared?

Nailed it.

[The Mikado]

What are the cutoffs we're using here? Is it Baby Boom 1946-1964, Gen X 1965-1981? That seems pretty standard, but the people born after, say, 1976 have very little in common with your standard Gen Xer mental image, much like people born in the 1958-1964 era have little to do with the traditional Baby Boomer cohort (hell, anyone born after 1957 never had to worry about the draft).

[Bandit3 the Worker]

What are the cutoffs we're using here? Is it Baby Boom 1946-1964, Gen X 1965-1981? That seems pretty standard, but the people born after, say, 1976 have very little in common with your standard Gen Xer mental image, much like people born in the 1958-1964 era have little to do with the traditional Baby Boomer cohort (hell, anyone born after 1957 never had to worry about the draft).

I think the Gallup survey said Generation X might have been 1965-79. I'm not sure about that though.

[Beet]

The age: party affiliation correlation became a lot more straightforward around 2008 - my guess is, a lot of younger folks could identify with Obama. It's hard to think of him as a boomer, even.

[Mr. Morden]

The age: party affiliation correlation became a lot more straightforward around 2008 - my guess is, a lot of younger folks could identify with Obama. It's hard to think of him as a boomer, even.

Andrew Gelman made this rather staggering plot of party vote vs. age for the 2000, 2004, and 2008 elections (taken from exit poll data):



So as recently as 2000, there wasn't much correlation between age and voting behavior.  And in fact, the most Republican group was the middle-aged, not the elderly.

And then if you go back to the 1980s, you had pundits like E.J. Dionne talking about how the GOP's strong support among younger voters presented a problem for the Democrats(!):

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/31/us/political-memo-gop-makes-reagan-lure-of-young-a-long-term-asset.html

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[King]

The Boomers voted for Reagan. They were anti-government because of combo Vietnam/Watergate angst and their parents were mostly New Deal pro-union generation.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

The Boomers voted for Reagan. They were anti-government because of combo Vietnam/Watergate angst and their parents were mostly New Deal pro-union generation.

So the boomers were McGovern/Reagan voters?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The Boomers voted for Reagan. They were anti-government because of combo Vietnam/Watergate angst and their parents were mostly New Deal pro-union generation.

Or, less charitably, they grew up and decided they'd got theirs.

[Mr. Morden]

The 1988 national exit poll data is interesting, with voters over 60 being Dukakis's strongest age demographic:

http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/how_groups_voted/voted_88.html

age 18-29: Bush +6
age 30-44: Bush +8
age 45-59: Bush +16
age 60+: Bush +2

For that matter, voters over 65 were also Gore's strongest age group in 2000, a year in which there was virtually no age gradient at all:

http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/how_groups_voted/voted_00.html

age 18-24: tie
age 25-29: Gore +3
age 30-49: Bush +2
age 50-64: Gore +2
age 65+: Gore +4

Compare that to 2012, when the age gap was enormous:

http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/how_groups_voted/voted_12.html

age 18-29: Obama +23
age 30-44: Obama +7
age 45-64: Romney +4
age 65+: Romney +12

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The Boomers voted for Reagan. They were anti-government because of combo Vietnam/Watergate angst and their parents were mostly New Deal pro-union generation.

Or, less charitably, they grew up and decided they'd got theirs.

do you mean that many would have had jobs, spouses and children by 1984?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The Boomers voted for Reagan. They were anti-government because of combo Vietnam/Watergate angst and their parents were mostly New Deal pro-union generation.

Or, less charitably, they grew up and decided they'd got theirs.

do you mean that many would have had jobs, spouses and children by 1984?

Yes, and that this inclined them politically rightwards in a way that revealed the fundamental shallowness of their earlier 'leftism'.

[politicus]

The Boomers voted for Reagan. They were anti-government because of combo Vietnam/Watergate angst and their parents were mostly New Deal pro-union generation.

Or, less charitably, they grew up and decided they'd got theirs.

do you mean that many would have had jobs, spouses and children by 1984?

Yes, and that this inclined them politically rightwards in a way that revealed the fundamental shallowness of their earlier 'leftism'.

Boomers moderated and moved towards the centre in all Western countries, but it seems to be only in the US that they became more right wing than the average voter.

Could ethnic changes (the Democrats becoming the party of minorities) explain that?

I doubt American boomers were more insincere/shallow in their original leftism than boomers in other countries.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What I mean by that is this--and I don't really think this is unique to the United States, definitely not.

Part of why I’m on the left myself, other than the fact that I come from an ancestrally left-leaning family, is that I believe that left-oriented policies smartly implemented provide a better life for almost everyone, the only exception that comes to mind being people who were already fabulously wealthy. In fact I’d go so far as to say that I think that assent to this idea is a necessary precondition for (for lack of a better phrase) true leftism, or else we’re all just a bunch of memphises and freepcrushers left hanging in the breeze. When the Baby Boomers grew up and got houses and jobs and kids and cars and decided that the right (or the center, I guess, whichever) now better suited their interests, they certainly may have been justified in so deciding, but they did also expose the fact that the so-called New Left in which they had earlier dabbled was, at heart, an unreal vision, since it was only appropriate not only for just one segment of society, which would have been questionable enough, but for a segment of society delineated by something as chimerical and by definition ever-changing as age. This unreal vision was demonstrated to have been predicated almost entirely on the exact sort of cultural-liberal and social-liberal preoccupations that I have next to no patience for even when I happen to agree with their policy conclusions, and to have thus been like a plantain tree—inside there was no solid part.

In other words the old saw about young men and leftism and hearts and old men and rightism and brains is itself self-evidently an attitude of the right and any former leftist who adheres to it or who bears it out in their life experience doesn’t really strike me as having been in any way firm in that leftism to begin with.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Here's a nice chart.

[Ban my account ffs!]

What are the cutoffs we're using here? Is it Baby Boom 1946-1964, Gen X 1965-1981? That seems pretty standard, but the people born after, say, 1976 have very little in common with your standard Gen Xer mental image, much like people born in the 1958-1964 era have little to do with the traditional Baby Boomer cohort (hell, anyone born after 1957 never had to worry about the draft).

The better dates dont conform to birth rate patterns, but more to cultural or historical events.

I think it is better to try and keep the generation around 20 years...

So generations of the 20th/21st century would be 1885-1904 (lost generation), 1905-1924 (GI Generation), 1925-1942 (silent generation), 1943-1962 (baby boomers), 1963-1981 (Gen X), 1982-2001 (Millennials), and thereafter whatever comes next.  In strauss howe theory Xers are the same archetype as the lost generation, the Millennials like the GI generation, and the current young children the next silent generation.

Then each generation can be divided in two, which is about a decade, which makes sense to the rational mind...

My take is that older post war baby boomers (1943-1953) are distinct from the latter group, known sometimes as 'generation Jones' cuz ya know they always be jonesin for something.

This puts Bandit right in the middle of Gen X during the year with the fewest births of any since 1945, the year abortion was legalized, and the year the post war economic boom really officially ended.

You have people like my brother born in 1980...and he belongs to neither Gen X or the Millennials.  The highlight of his coming of age was the dot com boom and the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, which many in his age group were sympathetic towards.  I'm five years younger and when I was 18 many of my friends got shipped off to Iraq and felt they should because of 9/11... Something most of them became bitterly angry about when they realized they sacrificed themselves for a fatter Cheney pocketbook...which is why they really HATE George W Bush and will probably never vote for a Republican again.

Your best friend and soldier dying from an IED that permanently screws your ankles...and then the military doctors chastize you for complaining and not doing full duty so you have to go to a civilian doctor who immediately takes xrays and finds multiple improperly healed small fractured in your feet and ankles and lower legs...a distinct and very common injury that military doctors of all people should know about because this only happens when a bomb blows up next to you...

It creates a certain bitterness towards
1) the military
2) the military industrial complex
3) the Republicans and the Democrats who brown nose them.  I honestly think many 28-33 year olds (the older millennials) see the GOP as the earthly incarnation of evil.  

And it wasnt always so... Mock polls in my high school in 2002 showed majority support for Norm Coleman for senator.  We remembered Bush standing on the smoldering ruins of the WTC holding up that flag and saying to the people who did it 'we're coming for you'...

But from there it just gets worse.  And worse.  And worse.  And then this glorious Republican Hummer Economy with the 99¢ support the troops sticker slapped on the back almost completely caved in.  Then years of the GOP being the party of petulant children who love to say no and complete gridlock keeps us depressed and scared of the future.  Now you have two self entitled rich mother f''kers who are spending vast fortunes to trick people into ruining their country for the enrichment of Chuck and Dave.  And outside of Debbie down in Dade county whining now and then, everybody...Republicans, Democrats, the Pauls, the Warrens... All of them...will do their best to turn us into a rents exonomy where they are the elite charging you rent to live and you thank them for the opportunity.

So...you don't vote.  And the Xers say 'we told you' and the boomers freak the frack out...HOW DARE YOU NOT VOTE YOU'RE ANTI AMERICAN IF THE FOUNDING FATHERS KNEW WHAT A CRAP GENERATION YOU WOULD BE BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH...WE NEED TO FIGHT THE COMMUNISTS HEAD ON CUZ IM A BABY BOOMER AND TIME STOPPED FOR ME IN 1983 AFTER THATNTV SPECIAL WHERE KANSAS CITY GOT NUKED.

But back to the point...Reagan has been dead for a long time now.  His presidency and the hope of conservatism has long been killed by all the terrible gopers that came after...so they're becoming more liberal.

I think boomers are becoming more reactionary and cynical.

But for them they were born into prosperity and things have just gotten worse since and probably wont get better before they kick the bucket.  I don't envy that.  At least as a 29 year old Millennial I can hope that things will get better in time for me to enjoy it.

[afleitch]

Intermoderate and Madeleine broadly get it right. First off, the first wave of actual boomers (even if we don't call them so) were born in the 1940’s. They are essentially in their late 60’s and 70’s now and were in their 30’s during Watergate, during the oil crisis and during the ‘come down’ from the 60’s. As a cohort (and why these sorts of generational splits should be looked at with more care) the ‘boomers’ also include the children of ‘boomers’ (those born in the 60’s). Their economic security allowed them to settle young and start a family young. The big dividing line in America is the Depression/New Deal. You can see that in the older exit polls even during the Reagan years. If people experienced that as young adults or children it made a huge difference in how they aligned themselves politically until their dying day.

It is also worth noting that the boomers (both waves) fashioned the ‘bride of the GOP’; the religious right which as a movement was very much born from the boomers (and the reasons should be self-evident, as should the reasons why it’s now starting to fall apart) Over the past 30 years that’s probably shifted maybe 10-15% of the electorate towards the GOP and against voters economic self-interest.

Now it appears at this moment, that Millennials/Gen Y are disproportionately Dem voters. If you take cohorts now in their mid 30’s, they’ve voted in four presidential cycles (all relatively close in terms of vote share) and have generally voted Democratic from Gore through to Obama. They’ve lived through ‘the stolen election’, Iraq, economic downturn and huge changes in social attitudes. That electorate is also a lot less white and lot more connected than older generations. It’s a difficult nut for the GOP to crack.

Pew has done research that’s quite interesting. If you turned 18 under Roosevelt (and would now be in your late 80’s and beyond) compared with the national average since 1994, you voted more Democratic right through until you were too small to count. The ‘Silent’ generation, the first wave of post war  boomers who turned 18 under Truman/Eisenhower (actual ‘hippies’) have been generally been more Republican except in 2000.

Boomers ‘fracture’ internally depending on your age. Those who turned 18 during Kennedy/Johnson (and are now in their 60’) are more Democratic until 2000 and then shift to the GOP. Those who turned 18 under Nixon do something completely different. They are more Republican in 1994, but that’s it. They are more Democratic than the nation and indeed could be considered to follow the average of what the entire electorate did (2004 excluded) However those who reach 18 under Ford/Carter (and therefore start their families under Reagan) are solidly GOP as are the first wave of ‘X-ers’ who reach 18 under Reagan/Bush. Those who turn 18 under Clinton, the last wave of X-ers are solidly Democratic (except the 9/11 effect  in 2004) and those who turned 18 under Bush/Obama even more solidly.

So part of the reason why the Democrats have struggled to win national elections since the 60’s (Clinton was helped by a split vote) until Obama is precisely because there wasn’t a consistent block of voters who would stick with Dems year on year to replace those who lived during the Depression who were dying off. Now there may be.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Here's a nice chart.

Very cool!

American whites born 1937-1947 and then 1955-1978 have been consistently Republican.  Only the blip from 1949-53 and especially after 1981 have been majority Dem.  

The most Republican year cohort are whites born in 1964.  They were 14 in 1978 and 24 in 1988.  They became politically aware during Carter's presidency, saw the transition to Reagan and then cast their first presidential votes in 1984.

But those born from 1961-1975 are the most Republican.  After 1975, GOP falls to parity around 1980 and Dem support grows dramatically before plateauing from 1981-1986.  The most Democratic whites alive today were born in 1986 and 1987 with Dem support at least 52% from 1983 to the last year available in 1994.

Not surprisingly, the rate holds at 53% from 1983-1993 but falls for 1994ites.  Political consciousness often doesn't begin to form until 14 according to them.. They were 14 in 2008 and have little politically oriented memory of the all GOP rule from 2003-2007. (Really from 2001-2007)

To those born after 1994.... Trust me...there was nothing good about those times.  Iraq, the axis of evil, skyrocketing food and energy prices while Bush and co lie through their teeth saying things are better than ever...just look at the housing market......................

I literally couldn't watch Bush speak after 2005.  It made me cringe so bad that I actually couldn't listen to the man say a word.  By the time Katrina happened...