Harvard Public Opinion Project: A Lost Generation for the GOP?

[publicunofficial]

You would of thought with the gigantic demographic advantage that the Democrats have, they would have some grand vision to show for it. It's like FDR without a New Deal

The next Democratic president will harness huge Millennial support, and the map will change significantly.

Yup. The next Democratic President will be shaped by Millennial and Generation Z attitudes, and will push the Democratic Party to address their concerns. Consequently, he should receive north of 65% of their support.

The Republicans' Southern strategy runs into the buzzsaw of this generation.

The Southern strategy evolved into the Northern strategy.

How are you defining the Northern Strategy? The majority of the states Trump won were states Bush I and II and Dole and McCain won. He won PA, WI, MI - three states - but that's not a true shift to a northern strategy. The vast majority of Trump voters were Southern, Interior, and Western suburban and rural voters who had backed prior Republicans.

It doesn't, I believe, create true inroads into the suburbs and so on that would be hallmarks of a true northern strategy. A Republican could win Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey and maybe Connecticut based on the northern strategy as you spelled out.

To make a long story short it involves the GOP abandoning social conservatism on the national level and painting themselves as the defenders of secularism against Islam.  Basically the GOP is trying to turn itself into Geert Wilders slowly so the base doesn't notice.

Except America's Muslim population is an insignificant percentage compared to the UK or France, and that will be the case for the foreseeable future. You can't scare people with "wave of Islam" rhetoric as effectively.

[mvd10]

You would of thought with the gigantic demographic advantage that the Democrats have, they would have some grand vision to show for it. It's like FDR without a New Deal

The next Democratic president will harness huge Millennial support, and the map will change significantly.

Yup. The next Democratic President will be shaped by Millennial and Generation Z attitudes, and will push the Democratic Party to address their concerns. Consequently, he should receive north of 65% of their support.

The Republicans' Southern strategy runs into the buzzsaw of this generation.

The Southern strategy evolved into the Northern strategy.

How are you defining the Northern Strategy? The majority of the states Trump won were states Bush I and II and Dole and McCain won. He won PA, WI, MI - three states - but that's not a true shift to a northern strategy. The vast majority of Trump voters were Southern, Interior, and Western suburban and rural voters who had backed prior Republicans.

It doesn't, I believe, create true inroads into the suburbs and so on that would be hallmarks of a true northern strategy. A Republican could win Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey and maybe Connecticut based on the northern strategy as you spelled out.

To make a long story short it involves the GOP abandoning social conservatism on the national level and painting themselves as the defenders of secularism against Islam.  Basically the GOP is trying to turn itself into Geert Wilders slowly so the base doesn't notice.

Does that also involve becoming rather populist on economic issues? Or do they just turn into something more like European centre-right parties (still relatively right-wing on economics but more concerned about immigration than about social issues like gay marriage)?

[JA]

Kind of an obvious point, but a big reason why this generation doesn't like Republicans (Trump especially) is because they're incredibly racially and ethnically diverse. Hispanics, Asians, and blacks don't like him. And the best possible result Trump got among 18-29 white voters was 48% to Hillary's 43%. And that's the best result I've seen so far.

According to roper, George Bush tied Al Gore with 18-24 year olds...so the idea that the youth have always being incredibly Democratic isn't the case.

Millennials as a whole are like 55% white, compared to the country as a whole at 62-63% white. It's not that much of a difference, and certainly doesn't explain the full discrepancy (maybe 5 points in the margin at most).

Actually, the voting population is 70-72% white, so it does make somewhat of a difference.

Wouldn't you have to know the White percentage of the millennial vote to make such a comparison?

[Adam Griffin]

Kind of an obvious point, but a big reason why this generation doesn't like Republicans (Trump especially) is because they're incredibly racially and ethnically diverse. Hispanics, Asians, and blacks don't like him. And the best possible result Trump got among 18-29 white voters was 48% to Hillary's 43%. And that's the best result I've seen so far.

According to roper, George Bush tied Al Gore with 18-24 year olds...so the idea that the youth have always being incredibly Democratic isn't the case.

Millennials as a whole are like 55% white, compared to the country as a whole at 62-63% white. It's not that much of a difference, and certainly doesn't explain the full discrepancy (maybe 5 points in the margin at most).

Actually, the voting population is 70-72% white, so it does make somewhat of a difference.

I'm of course using comparable numbers (total population) for the two groups, so you wouldn't need to know that necessarily (Jacobin). The only possible difference one might consider is that older Latinos tend to be disproportionately non-citizen while younger Latinos are disproportionately citizens; this might affect the discrepancy between population, voter registration and actual voters for each group, but again, not by a huge amount to make an argument that effectively says "Millennials are so Democratic just because of non-whites".

Even Millennial white voters are about 20 points more Democratic than white voters as a whole.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Kind of an obvious point, but a big reason why this generation doesn't like Republicans (Trump especially) is because they're incredibly racially and ethnically diverse. Hispanics, Asians, and blacks don't like him. And the best possible result Trump got among 18-29 white voters was 48% to Hillary's 43%. And that's the best result I've seen so far.

isn't your whole schtick insisting that young people are all nazis b/c of youtube comments or whatever

To agitate gullible people who think I'm serious, yes.

[RINO Tom]

I just don't understand why all those Eisenhower babies remained Republicans all this time ... dumbasses don't even know the parties swapped places a mere four years after he left office!!!!

Eisenhower was to the left of Clinton, but the parties didn't swap places.

He was being sarcastic.

Plus, no matter how opportunistic and void of actual ideological conviction he was, Clinton just simply wasn't to the right of Eisenhower.

[Virginiá]

Case in point: 8 years ago, Obama was swept into office by winning 18-29 year old voters by insane margins we have not seen since Reagan.

That lethal political cohort...where is it now? Why has the party gotten WORSE since then, strength wise?

What happened to Reagan's youth hordes? Oh, that's right, they became older and voted in Bill Clinton and gave gore the popular vote.

And 30-39 year olds trended less Republican this year as well, coming in at only 39% Trump, which would explain those 2008 Obama 18-29 year olds growing up. Obama's mid-60s win of 18-29 year olds was never a new baseline, it was partially inflated due to his large win and the GOP's sucky brand at the time. Unfortunately Clinton was not acceptable to many Millennials and it drove a lot of Millennials to 3rd parties.

Reagan's "hordes" are still Republican-leaning to this day. Having political opinions set early in life doesn't make you uncompromisingly partisan, it means you lean a certain way, to varying degrees.

[pbrower2a]

"abandoning social conservatism" that's a riot. Trump basically has embraced very single plank of the religious right's platform. He's even given up the facade of being relatively pro-trans.

Compare the GOP 10 years ago to the GOP now.  He also kept Obama's LGBT envoy.  The GOP will still be to the right of the Democrats on social issues but the difference won't be as big.

You do realize that social conservatism is a philosophy, not an ideology, and it adapts itself to changing events and values, right? The social conservatism of 2005 wasn't the social conservatism of 1985, nor was that the social conservatism of 1950. The Republican Party has largely dropped once big issues like gay marriage because it's the hot topic of a bygone era. Their social conservatism has simply adapted itself to the new framework of our present time.

Cultural conservatism shifts little except to recognize additions to the child and adult canon.  Heck, I listen almost exclusively to classical music (which is as arch-conservative a taste as one can have in cultural milieu) and consider modernity in graphic art something to pick and choose for based on content. I am satisfied that we could go back to the old standards of 'gentlemanly' education in the liberal arts so that we can be gentlemanly again. There would still be room for the introduction of the legitimate achievements of minorities and women who would have to be added to the canon of 'dead white males'. Fine. Paradoxically cutting out much of Karl Marx (on grounds of obsolescence more than offense) in favor of Martin Luther King would be a conservative trend. The liberal canon was good enough to make the radical W.E.B. Du Bois the sharp critic of racism that he was.      

The economic Right uses 'conservatism' as a euphemism for a reactionary agenda that seeks to return to the economic and political realities of the 1920s or earlier (no safety net) with only the addition of modern technology. If I had to choose between returning to the technologies of entertainment of the mid-1920s (nothing more advanced than silent black-and-white movies, no computers, crank telephones,  and no electronic entertainments more advanced than monaural sound on primitive radios and phonographs on the one side and the economic norms of the 1920s, I'd choose the more primitive technology of entertainment. Having to do 60-70 hours of factory work and living to age 40 would have killed me off by now. If you are a Polish-American or Italian-American, or (unless politically connected) an Irish-American, then you would be destitute by current standards. White 'ethnics' did not join the middle class until the end of World War II. And don't let me talk about how nasty life was for blacks in 'Ku Kluxistan' in the 1920s unless you want to hear some harsh moralizing.  

But this said, a more vibrant and conservative culture might be just the thing to ensure that America never fall for a demagogue like Donald Trump again. The 'anything goes' culture that we now have prepares Americans to delve into the worst. Well-educated people are more likely to understand and use formal logic, recognize and reject psychological hustles, and read between the lines (note the etymology of the words intelligent -- literally 'reading between [the lines]', distinguishing between people barely literate and those who do genuine thought).

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are still relevant, as are the Hebrew prophets, over two millennia later because they discuss characteristics of human nature that never really change. The Founding Fathers took due warning from Roman times, coming to recognize as far too few Americans how badly a political order with so many resources could so badly f--- up. The Founding Fathers may have liked Greco-Roman architecture, but they had no use for gladiatorial games or for feeding Christians to the lions.  

I look at Donald Trump, and I see much that I find wrong with America -- and little that I find right. Demagoguery is dangerous no matter what the political coloration; does anyone want a left-leaning demagogue to exploit the failure of Trump's America? I certainly don't! People need culture (an enriching experience) more than they need entertainment. I have been to the Mountain South, and I recognize the validity of its folkways... but it certainly needs to do more of what makes many outside the Mountain South (including middle-class minorities) successful. It's not the fiddle-and-banjo Bluegrass music that makes failures of people.  Donald Trump is a promoter of mind-numbing awfulness. He is even viler than Bill Clinton in his sex life, and he has a vindictive attitude toward law enforcement and criminal punishment. He is fully for an economic order in which 'every man for himself' prevails. His anti-intellectualism goes far beyond the justifiable condemnation of a wayward academic or artist to an assault on anyone not as simple-minded and vulgar as he is.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I think a lot of the issue questions are just young liberals taking more extreme positions.  I don't like the top-line (48-28), but it has Clinton winning youngs 52-32, and the real number was 55-36, which is probably a statistically insignificant difference (both numbers being lower is probably due to non-voters or "I forgots" being in there).

The one stat that apparently a lot of liberals have used is that apparently more young Republicans know a millionaire (28%) than a Muslim (22%).  I personally know both (my dad is actually a millionaire himself, and I know a couple Muslims that I met in college), but that's just me.

[Wiz in Wis]

This survey confirms the 2016 exit polls in that young whites gave Hillary Clinton the highest share of the vote among all white age cohorts... simultaneously, this group also voted 3rd party at the highest rate.

What should scare the GOP is not that Hillary got 43% of the white vote among 18-29 year olds - it's that Donald Trump only got 47%, compared to him winning boomer whites 62-34.

By comparison, Mitt Romney won young whites over Barack Obama 51-44... in other words, the Trump strategy turned off more young whites than it drew in, and a long term strategy based on Trumpish populism is not very likely to appeal to younger whites. If generational cohorts remain largely moored to their early party preferences, it won't pay off.

[Roronoa D. Law]

The GOP is facing a growing age gap and what makes it worse is that there is no Reagan to inspire a new generation of Republicans in fact quiet the opposite. But its to early to seal the GOP fate because most young people who vote this early are usually more liberal/conservative than the rest of their peers which explains Sanders and Cruz primary performance. The death of GOP is the urban-rural divide is becoming partisan. I can't see the GOP winning Florida and losing Duval and Hillsborough. I can't see them winning AZ w/o Maricopa or GA if Cobb/Gwinnett are 55+ D.

[Adam Griffin]

Kind of an obvious point, but a big reason why this generation doesn't like Republicans (Trump especially) is because they're incredibly racially and ethnically diverse. Hispanics, Asians, and blacks don't like him. And the best possible result Trump got among 18-29 white voters was 48% to Hillary's 43%. And that's the best result I've seen so far.

According to roper, George Bush tied Al Gore with 18-24 year olds...so the idea that the youth have always being incredibly Democratic isn't the case.

Millennials as a whole are like 55% white, compared to the country as a whole at 62-63% white. It's not that much of a difference, and certainly doesn't explain the full discrepancy (maybe 5 points in the margin at most).

Actually, the voting population is 70-72% white, so it does make somewhat of a difference.

Coming back to this from earlier: from the looks of exit polling, it'd appear that 18-29 year-old voters were about 63% white in 2016*, compared to 70% white for all voters - like I thought, the gap is still identical to the gap in the two groups' total populations.

*(Exit polls show white 18-29 as 12% of voters, black 18-29 as 3%, latino 18-29 as 3% + I took 1% from the all-age "other" category and assumed they were 18-29 as well based on likely demographic breakdown of younger voters).

[Technocracy Timmy]

Kind of an obvious point, but a big reason why this generation doesn't like Republicans (Trump especially) is because they're incredibly racially and ethnically diverse. Hispanics, Asians, and blacks don't like him. And the best possible result Trump got among 18-29 white voters was 48% to Hillary's 43%. And that's the best result I've seen so far.

According to roper, George Bush tied Al Gore with 18-24 year olds...so the idea that the youth have always being incredibly Democratic isn't the case.

Millennials as a whole are like 55% white, compared to the country as a whole at 62-63% white. It's not that much of a difference, and certainly doesn't explain the full discrepancy (maybe 5 points in the margin at most).

Millennials are 55% white? I've read reports that peg Generation Z as being 55% nonhispanic white (Source) so that can't be unless a decent chunk of Hispanic millennials are identifying as white.

[Adam Griffin]

Kind of an obvious point, but a big reason why this generation doesn't like Republicans (Trump especially) is because they're incredibly racially and ethnically diverse. Hispanics, Asians, and blacks don't like him. And the best possible result Trump got among 18-29 white voters was 48% to Hillary's 43%. And that's the best result I've seen so far.

According to roper, George Bush tied Al Gore with 18-24 year olds...so the idea that the youth have always being incredibly Democratic isn't the case.

Millennials as a whole are like 55% white, compared to the country as a whole at 62-63% white. It's not that much of a difference, and certainly doesn't explain the full discrepancy (maybe 5 points in the margin at most).

Millennials are 55% white? I've read reports that pegged Generation Z as being 55% nonhispanic white (Source) so that can't add up unless a decent chunk of Hispanic millennials identify as white.

I assume if the original point was about how younger people don't like the GOP, we're referring to people who can actually be voters right now: 18-34 year-olds. Among this category and according to the Brookings Institution, this group is 55% non-Hispanic white:

[Technocracy Timmy]

Kind of an obvious point, but a big reason why this generation doesn't like Republicans (Trump especially) is because they're incredibly racially and ethnically diverse. Hispanics, Asians, and blacks don't like him. And the best possible result Trump got among 18-29 white voters was 48% to Hillary's 43%. And that's the best result I've seen so far.

According to roper, George Bush tied Al Gore with 18-24 year olds...so the idea that the youth have always being incredibly Democratic isn't the case.

Millennials as a whole are like 55% white, compared to the country as a whole at 62-63% white. It's not that much of a difference, and certainly doesn't explain the full discrepancy (maybe 5 points in the margin at most).

Millennials are 55% white? I've read reports that pegged Generation Z as being 55% nonhispanic white (Source) so that can't add up unless a decent chunk of Hispanic millennials identify as white.

I assume if the original point was about how younger people don't like the GOP, we're referring to people who can actually be voters right now: 18-34 year-olds. Among this category and according to the Brookings Institution, this group is 55% non-Hispanic white:

Oh I see so Gen Z is even more diverse than I thought.

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ Nevertheless, I feel as I've been posting in here, we've sort gotten off the original point I was trying to make: the amount of "diversity" - whether we're looking at the total vs. youth population or the total vs. youth voters - present right now isn't nearly enough to justify saying that "younger voters are more Democratic because they're less white". In large part, that diversity hasn't even yet begun to be felt at the ballot box (for reasons I'd be happy to explain independently).

Certainly it has an effect, but it's nowhere nearly potent enough to be responsible for why Millennial voters are 20 points more Democratic on average than the nation's voters as a whole. Like I mentioned earlier, even white Millennial voters by themselves are likewise 20 points more Democratic than white voters as a whole.

[Technocracy Timmy]

^^^ Nevertheless, I feel as I've been posting in here, we've sort gotten off the original point I was trying to make: the amount of "diversity" - whether we're looking at the total vs. youth population or the total vs. youth voters - present right now isn't nearly enough to justify saying that "younger voters are more Democratic because they're less white". In large part, that diversity hasn't even yet begun to be felt at the ballot box (for reasons I'd be happy to explain independently).

Certainly it has an effect, but it's nowhere nearly potent enough to be responsible for why Millennial voters are 20 points more Democratic on average than the nation's voters as a whole. Like I mentioned earlier, even white Millennial voters by themselves are likewise 20 points more Democratic than white voters as a whole.

Oh I definitely agree. I was just stating the obvious in my original comment since the Harvard study/project didn't take note of it.

I think generational attachment is far more important than people realize. FDR was a transformative President for the G.I. Generation much in the way Ronald Reagan was a transformative President for the Baby Boomer Generation.

I think that figure for millennials will come in 2020 or more likely, 2024. Obama didn't set himself as a realigning or transformative President given that a member of his own party didn't succeed him and that he wasn't able to shift the views of the opposition party to the extent FDR did with Eisenhower or Reagan did with Clinton.

[pbrower2a]

Kind of an obvious point, but a big reason why this generation doesn't like Republicans (Trump especially) is because they're incredibly racially and ethnically diverse. Hispanics, Asians, and blacks don't like him. And the best possible result Trump got among 18-29 white voters was 48% to Hillary's 43%. And that's the best result I've seen so far.

According to roper, George Bush tied Al Gore with 18-24 year olds...so the idea that the youth have always being incredibly Democratic isn't the case.

Millennials as a whole are like 55% white, compared to the country as a whole at 62-63% white. It's not that much of a difference, and certainly doesn't explain the full discrepancy (maybe 5 points in the margin at most).

Millennials are 55% white? I've read reports that peg Generation Z as being 55% nonhispanic white (Source) so that can't be unless a decent chunk of Hispanic millennials are identifying as white.

Add to this -- there has been much intermarriage between Anglos and Hispanics. Is someone with a German-American father and a Mexican-American mother "Anglo" or "Hispanic", she resembling one of the Aztec images in Mexico City?  Is the person with a Cuban-American father who looks indistinguishable from people of Spain (why not? That's where his ancestors are from!) and an Irish-American mother "Anglo" or "Hispanic"?

Remember that "Hispanic" is a cultural and not a racial label. Replace the "Mexican-American " mother with a black mother or the "Cuban-American" father with a  black father and there is no ambiguity about identity: the offspring is considered black in accordance with the one-drop rule. But there is no one-drop rule with Hispanic origin.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Kind of an obvious point, but a big reason why this generation doesn't like Republicans (Trump especially) is because they're incredibly racially and ethnically diverse. Hispanics, Asians, and blacks don't like him. And the best possible result Trump got among 18-29 white voters was 48% to Hillary's 43%. And that's the best result I've seen so far.

According to roper, George Bush tied Al Gore with 18-24 year olds...so the idea that the youth have always being incredibly Democratic isn't the case.

Millennials as a whole are like 55% white, compared to the country as a whole at 62-63% white. It's not that much of a difference, and certainly doesn't explain the full discrepancy (maybe 5 points in the margin at most).

Millennials are 55% white? I've read reports that peg Generation Z as being 55% nonhispanic white (Source) so that can't be unless a decent chunk of Hispanic millennials are identifying as white.

Add to this -- there has been much intermarriage between Anglos and Hispanics. Is someone with a German-American father and a Mexican-American mother "Anglo" or "Hispanic", she resembling one of the Aztec images in Mexico City?  Is the person with a Cuban-American father who looks indistinguishable from people of Spain (why not? That's where his ancestors are from!) and an Irish-American mother "Anglo" or "Hispanic"?

Remember that "Hispanic" is a cultural and not a racial label. Replace the "Mexican-American " mother with a black mother or the "Cuban-American" father with a  black father and there is no ambiguity about identity: the offspring is considered black in accordance with the one-drop rule. But there is no one-drop rule with Hispanic origin.

This is true. In my experience growing up in California, half white and half Latino peers of mine always identify with both sides of their family. Many of them look like they could pass for either Mediterranean or Middle Eastern origin and they often get mistaken for those ethnicities. Some do look very white though.