Reports of Democrats’ death may be greatly exaggerated
All those stories about the young-uns turning conservative? I was skeptical too. Jean M. Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, isn’t buying it either:
The Cooperative Election Study, one of the largest politically focused surveys of Americans, goes back to 2006 and just released its 2024 data. Those data aren’t perfect—they have yet to be validated against the voter file, meaning they are based on self-reported voter turnout. But they are still a much better source for studying generational shifts than data from just one year, like Shor’s….
Consistent with other reports, the CES data show that young adults (ages 18 to 29) voted for Trump in 2024 at a much higher rate than they did in 2020. The trend was especially pronounced among young men, whose support for Trump increased by 10 percentage points since 2020, compared with 6 points for young women. Although some recent polling suggests that 18-to-21-year-olds were more likely to support Trump than 22-to-29-year-olds, the CES data show the younger and older subgroups voting for Trump at near-identical rates in 2024. Young adults were also more likely to vote for Republican House candidates than in 2020, though the change was not as large as in the presidential race.
Yes, and:
… voting for a Republican candidate isn’t the same as identifying as conservative. Here is where the CES data cast doubt on the notion that Gen Z is an especially right-leaning generation. According to my analysis of the CES data, young adults have actually become less likely to identify as conservative in surveys during presidential-election years since 2008. The trend is not due to increases in the nonwhite population; fewer white young adults identified as conservative in 2024 (29 percent) than did in 2016 (33 percent).
I had familiar conversations Sunday with people of my generation about how to get more younger people engaged. It might help if the face of the party looked more like AOC and Max Frost and less like Chuck Schumer and Jim Clyburn. But it doesn’t. It might help if Democrats reached out to more Gen Z and Millennials and asked them to vote because their futures depend on it. But they don’t.
Nearly half of voters 45 and under are registered independents. Democrats’ are still using outreach strategies based primarily on turning out Democrats. Those tactics date from when Democrats were a much larger proportion of registered voters. The bulk of independents don’t even show up on their radars. Democrats are afraid to send volunteers to engage voters whom their predictive software calculates may not be solidly on their team (potential MAGAs!). And when zealous volunteers approach independents they can come on like Jehovah’s Witnesses for Democrats. Not exactly a pitch designed to appeal to people put off by party politics. Why does voting matter for them? That should be the pitch. It’s not about what they can do for your party or candidates, but about what they can do for themselves. They’re voting for a future.
Gen Z, argues Twenge, is a uniquely pessimistic generation. They “will vote for whichever party is not currently in office.” Their reflex is to “vote the bastards out … no matter which party is in power.”
Politics now is not about policy or party, but about passion. Democrats who fail to recognize that will fail to build winning coalitions going forward.
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