Oh Daddy

by digby

Echidne has posted a piece about a professor who claims that liberals are being outbred by conservatives and are therefore, going to eventually go the way of the dodo bird. The professor writes:

Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They’re not having enough of them, they haven’t for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That’s a “fertility gap” of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%–explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.

Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today’s problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020–and all for no other reason than babies.

And here I thought liberals were the lovers and conservatives were the fighters.

But where’s the guarantee that Republican embryo becomes Republican voter? There are three kids in my wingnut family and only one is a chip off the old block, and he’s pretty apathetic. The rightwing politics in my family were what turned my brother and me into raving liberals. I think that happens fairly often — the old preacher’s kid syndrome. It’s certainly possible that a lot of conservatives come from liberal families as well — I just haven’t come across a lot of them. I do know quite few people who have been influenced by their spouses to change political directions, though.

I guess my point is that I’m not really sure that being born into politics is the predictor this professor seems to believe it is. According to Echidne there’s a pretty good possibility that this professor is pulling his data out of his ass, so perhaps that’s not surprising.

How many of you liberals out there came from conservative families?

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