Younger generations and (large) cities - could this actually *hurt* Democrats?

[All Along The Watchtower]

What I mean by the thread title is the tendency of young, college-educated, and liberal-minded people to congregate in certain, mostly large cities/urban areas. This is true for people of this description from every region of the country (or of the world, in many cases these days), for both men and women of this description, people of all ethnic and racial groups, as well as both LGBT individuals and those who are straight/"cis", and furthermore, people who don't belong to (conservative, white) Christian groups, or who are even religious at all. And all of these categories overlap in significant ways, of course.

The implication here is that the places where all of these younger, largely liberal/left-wing people move tend to be already overwhelmingly Democratic areas, and are more often than not in pretty safely Democratic states, so if anything, this trend is getting stronger. This obviously already hurts the Democratic Party in down-ballot races, but I'd argue it hurt them in the most recent presidential election as well. And in light of Republicans currently controlling the governments of a lot of "purple" states - which has lead to both egregious gerrymandering and even more egregious voter suppression efforts - as well as the younger generation continuing to lag behind older Americans in registration, turnout, and broader political participation (for various reasons that would take another, longer post to adequately cover), I'm seriously wondering if these demographic trends that on the surface do indeed look very friendly to Democrats might actually hurt them, if only in the short-to-medium-term.

Curious as to what others' thoughts are on this topic.

[Beet]

Obviously. California is a giant dumpster for liberals. The least they could do is make a decent place to live, but no. At this point, I'm just hoping the cost of housing continues to skyrocket and forces some of those Hillary voters into Trump states.

[maga2020]

It's what will make the democrats a permanent minority.

The generation gap has never been larger and the electorate will only get older, the only thing saving the democrats is that the graying of America is way less severe than Europe's but in the end old people will increasingly outnumber young people and increasingly vote for the GOP.

Labour is trapped in the same situation in the UK and not even the Tories botching Brexit will help them, the 60+ electorate is extremely eurosceptic and will always vote Tory by a landslide.

[Person Man]

It's what will make the democrats a permanent minority.

The generation gap has never been larger and the electorate will only get older, the only thing saving the democrats is that the graying of America is way less sever than Europe's but in the end old people will increasingly outnumber young people and increasingly vote for the GOP.

Labour is trapped in the same situation in the UK and not even the Tories botching Brexit will help them, the 60+ electorate is extremely eurosceptic and will always vote Tory by a landslide.

That is maybe the one thing that the Republicans have going for them. People living longer and having fewer kids. Then again, "aspirational" voters are living shorter lives as white collar whites and minorities improve.

[GGSETTER]

1. Yes, this is a problem and does give the GOP a slight advantage in 2018 but it's definitely not enough to stop a 2006 style wave for example (just enough to mitigate even larger losses they otherwise would've had if Democrats were more geographically dispersed).

2. Also here's some interesting data on millennials moving to the suburbs in faster numbers than expected. Good article and good post.

2006 is a long time ago. A lot of people still associated Bill Clinton and Other Moderates/Conservatives with the Democrats. Now they are associated with At the worst "The Far Left" and at best "Liberals".

Also in 2006 we were loosing 2 wars started by Bush; Oil pieces were through the roof, Housing prices were getting out of hand, Bush disappointed his base with a Moderate (Non-Conservative) SCOTUS pick and the GOP was pushing for amnesty for the illegals. A big part of why the Democrats won was because the GOP Base rebelled.

The current Democrat Coalition is mostly Minorities, College Students and Liberals. Except for the Liberals I don't
see the Democrats being able to turn out their Base (With the exception of Liberals) during a Primary.

[Technocracy Timmy]

1. Yes, this is a problem and does give the GOP a slight advantage in 2018 but it's definitely not enough to stop a 2006 style wave for example (just enough to mitigate even larger losses they otherwise would've had if Democrats were more geographically dispersed).

2. Also here's some interesting data on millennials moving to the suburbs in faster numbers than expected. Good article and good post.

2006 is a long time ago. A lot of people still associated Bill Clinton and Other Moderates/Conservatives with the Democrats. Now they are associated with At the worst "The Far Left" and at best "Liberals".

Also in 2006 we were loosing 2 wars started by Bush; Oil pieces were through the roof, Housing prices were getting out of hand, Bush disappointed his base with a Moderate (Non-Conservative) SCOTUS pick and the GOP was pushing for amnesty for the illegals. A big part of why the Democrats won was because the GOP Base rebelled.

The current Democrat Coalition is mostly Minorities, College Students and Liberals. Except for the Liberals I don't
see the Democrats being able to turn out their Base (With the exception of Liberals) during a Primary.

Midterms are referendums on the sitting President. Right now Trump has a 38-39% approval rating and just failed to get his healthcare bill (which hovered between 12-19% approval) through congress. Right now the Democrats are leading by about 8 points according to the 538 tracker for 2018.

The GOP could save their majorities if they actually moved onto other popular agenda items like tax reform and infrastructure.

[Virginiá]

Midterms are referendums on the sitting President. Right now Trump has a 38-39% approval rating and just failed to get his healthcare bill (which hovered between 12-19% approval) through congress. Right now the Democrats are leading by about 8 points according to the 538 tracker for 2018.

The GOP could save their majorities if they actually moved onto other popular agenda items like tax reform and infrastructure.

Conveniently for Democrats, Trump's current approval ratings is in the same exact range Bush's was during the 2006 midterms.

Just because GWB had 2 unpopular wars raging on, a botched disaster relief operation and oodles of scandals for his party does not mean it would take an equivalent of that for Democrats to have another large wave under a GOP president, not to mention that people's interpretations of what is "equivalent" would vary quite a bit. Given how things have changed since 2006, it's possible that state-level gains are more limited and obviously Democrats are much more likely to end up with a slim House majority if they can get one at all, but there are already a ton of signs that a wave is building up. I don't get how some people can't see this. This is supposed to be the best part of Trump's presidency - the beginning, and it usually goes downhill from here. Given that Trump is, well, Trump, I doubt he will buck that trend.

[TJ in Oregon]

What I mean by the thread title is the tendency of young, college-educated, and liberal-minded people to congregate in certain, mostly large cities/urban areas. This is true for people of this description from every region of the country (or of the world, in many cases these days), for both men and women of this description, people of all ethnic and racial groups, as well as both LGBT individuals and those who are straight/"cis", and furthermore, people who don't belong to (conservative, white) Christian groups, or who are even religious at all. And all of these categories overlap in significant ways, of course.

The implication here is that the places where all of these younger, largely liberal/left-wing people move tend to be already overwhelmingly Democratic areas, and are more often than not in pretty safely Democratic states, so if anything, this trend is getting stronger. This obviously already hurts the Democratic Party in down-ballot races, but I'd argue it hurt them in the most recent presidential election as well. And in light of Republicans currently controlling the governments of a lot of "purple" states - which has lead to both egregious gerrymandering and even more egregious voter suppression efforts - as well as the younger generation continuing to lag behind older Americans in registration, turnout, and broader political participation (for various reasons that would take another, longer post to adequately cover), I'm seriously wondering if these demographic trends that on the surface do indeed look very friendly to Democrats might actually hurt them, if only in the short-to-medium-term.

Curious as to what others' thoughts are on this topic.

You correctly noted the problems posed for Democrats due to the distribution of voters but there is also another problem, which is that such extreme political segregation isolates a large share of Democratic voters to the wider culture, making it harder for them to understand how everyone else is thinking and makes everyone else understand their thinking less and less. The reason why this harms the Democrats rather than helping them is that the progressive cultural zones are far less than half the country's population. They need more votes elsewhere than the Republicans do in the hipster zones. If the country eventually urbanizes and gentrifies to the point where that is no longer the case then the Republicans would turn out to be on the short end of the stick. But we're very far from there and in the meantime this will continue to harm the Democrats.

[Person Man]

What I mean by the thread title is the tendency of young, college-educated, and liberal-minded people to congregate in certain, mostly large cities/urban areas. This is true for people of this description from every region of the country (or of the world, in many cases these days), for both men and women of this description, people of all ethnic and racial groups, as well as both LGBT individuals and those who are straight/"cis", and furthermore, people who don't belong to (conservative, white) Christian groups, or who are even religious at all. And all of these categories overlap in significant ways, of course.

The implication here is that the places where all of these younger, largely liberal/left-wing people move tend to be already overwhelmingly Democratic areas, and are more often than not in pretty safely Democratic states, so if anything, this trend is getting stronger. This obviously already hurts the Democratic Party in down-ballot races, but I'd argue it hurt them in the most recent presidential election as well. And in light of Republicans currently controlling the governments of a lot of "purple" states - which has lead to both egregious gerrymandering and even more egregious voter suppression efforts - as well as the younger generation continuing to lag behind older Americans in registration, turnout, and broader political participation (for various reasons that would take another, longer post to adequately cover), I'm seriously wondering if these demographic trends that on the surface do indeed look very friendly to Democrats might actually hurt them, if only in the short-to-medium-term.

Curious as to what others' thoughts are on this topic.

You correctly noted the problems posed for Democrats due to the distribution of voters but there is also another problem, which is that such extreme political segregation isolates a large share of Democratic voters to the wider culture, making it harder for them to understand how everyone else is thinking and makes everyone else understand their thinking less and less. The reason why this harms the Democrats rather than helping them is that the progressive cultural zones are far less than half the country's population. They need more votes elsewhere than the Republicans do in the hipster zones. If the country eventually urbanizes and gentrifies to the point where that is no longer the case then the Republicans would turn out to be on the short end of the stick. But we're very far from there and in the meantime this will continue to harm the Democrats.

For the Presidency and the House, literally all they need is for Southern big cities to start acting like big cities in the rest of the country.  We just took a dramatic move in that direction, and I always find it odd that most everyone here casually assumes the Southern white vote will stay 80%ish R indefinitely.  It's certainly much more of an anomaly than some town in Ohio going from 50% Romney to 60% Trump.  People born after 1980 have a totally different idea of what it means to be culturally Southern, and I expect this to be reflected at the polls eventually.

The Senate is much more of a problem.  Basically, they either need the Mormon states or 5 Joe Manchins.

That is what they said the year they elected McCaskill, Webb, Tester, and Briwn by double digits.

[AN63093]

Good thread.  This is one of my biggest issues with the "demographics is destiny" theory, that it often fails to account for geographical dispersion, which is equally as important (if not more so), than what the raw % is in numbers of millennials, Hispanics, etc., voting D.

In short, I think that unless there is either a re-suburbanization trend among millennials, and/or unless millennials begin to move back into the interior US, then their voting power will not be reflected by the EC since the census/redistricting will lag behind population trends and there are still enough Boomers in the interior states.  By the time they are all gone, the next generation will have started voting and we don't know what their voting patters will be like yet.

At risk of repeating myself, I already posted lengthier thoughts on this in another thread which I will re-post here:

One trend that I'd like to see studied more in-depth (I've seen some articles here and there on this, but nothing as academically rigorous as I'd prefer), are migration patterns of millennials- is there a re-suburbanization trend?  Is there a trend of moving out of coastal states, and towards say, the mid-west or interior west or non-coastal South?

Because if the answer is "no," and most millennials live in large urban areas in half a dozen states, then it may become somewhat irrelevant how much of a edge Dems have in party identification among millennials.  Now, of course, the census and redistricting should correct for this over time, but it will still lag behind population trends and there will still be enough Boomers across the nation, at least for the next decade or two.  By the time that generation is finally all "gone," the post-millennial generation will have started voting as well, such that it's possible that the electoral college never really reflects the millennials' voting power.  In that case, I would imagine more elections like 2016 will happen, with a PV/EV disparity.

However, I have to imagine that the answer is "yes," and that eventually, a millennial that moved to San Francisco from.. I dunno, Omaha or something, and is paying thousands of dollars to live in what was once a utility closet, on the second floor of a warehouse with 20 other people that is in violation of building code and isn't zoned for residential use, finally decides that they aren't actually getting that much fulfillment from the local hipster brunch place, and that their parents at this point in their life had a 4 bedroom house, a yard, kids, two vehicles and no student debt.  Maybe that millennial then says "screw this" and moves back.

We are seeing some "interior" areas growing, and quickly... the Nashville MSA has one of the hottest growth rates in the country.  The Denver MSA obviously has been one of the fastest growing areas in the last 20 years, which is a big reason why CO has moved farther into the D category.  But even outside the usual suspects: OKC, surprisingly, is hitting almost 10% growth.  Des Moines is over 10%, and who would've guessed that?  Places like Indianapolis and Columbus are actually outpacing MSAs like NY, LA, and Boston.

Even IF (this is still a big "if" in my mind) there is a re-suburbanization trend and/or re-migration trend away from the coasts, then that begs the question of whether these millennials will bring their politics with them, or whether they will change/shift in political views as they age and life priorities change. 

And still, none of this could happen as well.  Birth rates are falling- slowly, but still quite noticeably since the early 2000s.  I think it's also plausible that millennials simply aren't as interested in family formation, which would tend to negate any of the trends I discuss above.  In which case, the millennials may stay geographically concentrated for years to come, and in my opinion, the EC would then tend to neutralize the advantage Dems would have in party identification.

[AN63093]

Well, there will always be some holdouts since there are some states that just won't have much millennial growth no matter what, such as LA and MS.

But I guess we could say "most," or at least, "a significant amount," since at the very least, I think AZ and GA will be problematic for the GOP in the future (I am including the greater Sun Belt, and not just the traditional South for the purposes of this point).  Though I think those states have more to do with minority growth than millennials, per se.  TX is also worth watching, though I don't think it'll ever become an outright D state, just because there are too many conservative whites there and the influence of the oil/gas industry.  Though it could be a swing state or even a toss-up.

A realignment could also open things up wide-open for the Dems, assuming such a realignment triggers less polarization, party lines drawn more on economic issues, and the Dems winning some whites again.  Almost every state in the South is up for grabs in that case, including states like KY and AR... see my maps here for more on that.

If, however, we just see increased polarization, particularly on racial lines, which is what I fear will happen, then a lot of the south will stay R, particularly if millennials don't sufficiently leave the coasts or re-suburbanize.  In this case, most of the states will stay the same and the only real toss up will be GA, which will be a bitter, intensely polarized turnout battle, like NC on steroids.  Maybe TX depending on Hispanic turnout.  In my link above, I have a map for that scenario as well.

FL is a toss up in all scenarios, I think, just because the blend of demographics there does not favor one party or another, and I don't think it will in the future either.

[AN63093]

Thanks for the link S&C.  If true, that would challenge a lot of assumptions I make in future projections, so I look forward to reading it.

[Person Man]

The "Millennials are concentrating in the cities" thing is objectively false, though: http://joelkotkin.com/forget-urban-stereotypes-millennial-america-really-looks-like/

Unless moving to the country and having children actively makes people more conservative (surprisingly little evidence supports this- other than in times of economic crisis, very few people switch parties after age 24), the self-packing problem should solve itself over the next decade in most metro areas.

I think there will eventually be a nationalized 2:1 R white vote and the non-white vote will moderate a bit, but this won't be enough to save Republicans in states that are less than 60% white.

So Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and Texas will move to the left of PA, MI, IA, MC, and WI for good? Wonder what will happen to VA, CO, WA, and OR. They keep trending Democrat.