This supports the theory that red-avatars always say is false- that people get more Republican as they age.
Not necessarily. What this shows is that practically all of the R among the elderly from 2008-2016 must have come from the heavily Dem FDR generation passing away (age 80+ still voted more Dem than the nation as a whole in 2012) and being replaced by Lean Rep Baby Boomers aging into that group, not from changing anyone's mind.
If people inevitably get more conservative as they age, why was Bill Clinton's best age cohort seniors? A generational view says it's because they came of age with popular Democratic presidents leading us through the Depression and WWII.
This data does imply that people born after 1990 are not as Dem as 1982-1990, because the oldest generation will be drastically over represented in voting and they shifted right much less than the PV.
It is not just the President they came of age with. In fact, I would argue they produce the President rather then the other way around.
1. FDR Seniors are the last generation of Solid Dem Southern Voters.
2. Elsewhere, FDR Seniors are the first generation that was dominated by Irish/Italian/Eastern Europeans. Them coming of peak voting age, is what wrecked the GOP in MA starting in the 1950's, because the WASPs got swamped at the polls.
3. They were rebelling against a pre-existing dynamic.
If you look at the Presidential elections in 1928 and compare it to 1932. There was a massive increase in voting in 1932. The Depression pushed disengaged young ethnics to the polls, they came out, they voted for FDR, they were unionized post Wagner Act and became a key part of the Democratic base in the cities, demolishing pre-existing Republican operations in places like Philly, Chicago etc.
