Gallup: Age Demographics Show Strong Democratic Advantages
A new Gallup analysis of party identification, compiled from their national polling over the last five months, paints an astonishing picture of how party ID spreads across every age group from 18 to 85 -- and a very tough demographic picture for the Republican Party:
Democrats outpace the GOP across every age group, but the gap varies from one cohort to another, with the greatest differences among the Baby Boomers and Generation Y. The GOP nearly achieves parity among Generation X (ages 30-44), people in their late 60s, and the 85-year old group.
The pollster's analysis goes through several theories, noting that younger voters often tend to be more liberal. But one interesting hypothesis is floated, noting the extent of these differences and where they occur: That these groups are heavily influenced by the eras when they came of political age, -- the Baby Boomers in the 60s, Generation X in the Reagan/Bush Sr. years, etc. And it should be noted that Generation Y came of age during the George W. Bush years, and have now entered the Obama period.
Josh
Matt
Eric
Brian
There it is... in plain green and white... The indisputable fact that we are a "Center Right" country!!!
Or that's how Jim DeMint would read this data
May 8, 2009 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
A center right country in a big tent of freedom.
May 8, 2009 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think the graph implies a more liberal America -- just that below 35, someone is more likely to identify as Independent than Republican.
There is a significant libertarian movement in young people, anecdotally prevalent in those who work in IT/engineering.
May 8, 2009 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
What is wrong with my generation (X). We used to be cool, and now we are Republicans? What the heck happened?
May 8, 2009 11:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Have patience with your age group--they'll come around. In the run-up and after the 2000 election my Gen X son and I could barely speak to each other we were so polarized over politics. In 2008 he had done a complete 180, voted for Obama and our Dem. Rep. Tim Walz (D-MN) and voted Dem. for State Rep. as well. He now has had his eyes opened after seeing 8 years of Bush/Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and company have no hold on him whatever. He used his critical thinking skills and just opened his eyes and "got it"...bless his heart!!(Maybe that is the difference between age27 and 36 in maturing, observing, thinking, understanding the world around you.)
May 8, 2009 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry to burst your bubble, but we were never cool:
http://www.liketotally80s.com/80s-yearbook-pictures.html
May 8, 2009 3:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey now, I was deathrock in the eighties and did not look like any of those pictures! :)
May 8, 2009 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wouldn't invest a great deal on that 84-86 demographic
May 8, 2009 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting to note that the only semi-monotonic trend is that identification as an independent goes down with age. I guess it takes some people a lifetime of learning to figure out who (in their minds) are the good guys and the bad guys.
May 8, 2009 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
i, like i think a lot of people, don't see it as good vs evil. More as bad vs horrific. i myself am fiscally conservative, and mildly anti-union (i make factory equipment and much prefer delivery and service at non-union plants). But the overriding concern is that the current group of gop bozos should be kept out of power.
May 8, 2009 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
That dip from 42 to 58 is an interesting one.
May 8, 2009 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I forgot to finish my sentence.
...on Republican party identification.
May 8, 2009 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
nixon?
May 8, 2009 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rockin' Ronnie and GHW. It has become clear that the promised land has been turned into a parking lot.
May 8, 2009 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don't know what you’ve got
‘Til it's gone...
May 8, 2009 2:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
looks like nixon and gw are the dem peaks,
somewhere in reagan, bush, clinton is the rep peak.
May 8, 2009 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder if the same chart exists for other times in history. It would be interesting to see how much correlates to age and how much to generation.
May 8, 2009 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't have time to look up every single link in the world on this but it has been soundly disproven that youth vote any more liberal because they are young. My age cohort, I am 48 and 6 months older then Obama, has long been one of the strongest voting Republican cohorts. The first president we could vote for was Reagan which my age cohort went for by something like 15 points.
This is extremely helpful on this general subject:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_01/012847.php#more
May 8, 2009 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think soundly disproven is a bit of an exaggeration - certainly age correlation has been weakened as a potential cause. But using the word "prove" in this context(on either side of the issue) is inaccurate.
Take a close look at the graph up top here, then at the NYT graph which is linked in the article you suggest. You will note that the same 42-58 cohort which voted for Reagan and Bush quite strongly at the time, is showing a present day dip in Republican party ID. It brings to mind an old saying - good judgment comes from bad experience, which comes from bad judgment.
What I find particularly interesting is the tendency shown in this poll for the younger cohorts to tend away from Republican party identification. It's interesting to me because of the preponderance of conservative leanings in media over their entire lives.
Is it a rebellion against what is perceived as the popular views and values?
Could it be that the strength of conservative viewpoints in media has HURT the Republicans because it's more clear what their values are, and the younger cohorts tend to reject them from a moral standpoint? Is it enlightened self-interest?
May 8, 2009 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
The data are obviously liberal-biased and under represent the fat old Viagra-gobbling white guy sexual tourist group.
~
May 8, 2009 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
One thing I take from this is that Obama would have won 65-35 if people under 40 voted at the same rate as people over 60.
May 8, 2009 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
When is a snapshot an epic movie? When you're discussing voting demographics and beer purchases. Most people tend to continue to identify with the political party to which they first join during their early (political) formative years (about the same time the settle on a favorite beer label). I'm pretty sure Nate Silver has written about this at length (the party association, not so much the beer).
The Rs, under Nixon, made a huge strategic blunder when they adopted the Southern Strategy, but probably couldn't anticipate the demographic shifts. Reagan overcame demographics through historical luck and his own personality, but by the Clinton era the writing was clearly visible for those who chose to read it. Remember, Gore actually won the vote in 2000, before King George was anointed in the Star Chamber, and then was re-elected due to grand misrepresentations about 9/11 and the Iraq war, and gerrymandering by DeLay and Company, which masked the trends a bit.
For all of Rove's and DeLay's braying about a permanent majority, the inexorable demographics are showing their true colors. What the Rs are still clueless about, or helpless to change, is that their rise on the right side of the graph is going to disappear pretty quickly due to attrition, and their only other rise in the middle of the graph is a smaller population than either the baby boomer or gen Y groups. The future is here, and it's the left side of the graph.
Add race, urban density, income and education to the age calculus and you've got a pretty certain trend. Circumstances, personality and luck may be able to overcome gravity occasionally, but it's all uphill for the R's for a long, long time.
May 8, 2009 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting parallel that church attendance shows almost the same trend: more older people attend than younger people: http://brewright.blogspot.com/2007/04/church-attendance-rates-by-age.html
May 8, 2009 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting blog and post, but it’s missing an important part of the equation: Generation Jones, born 1954-1965, between the Boomers and Generation X. Google Generation Jones, and you’ll see it’s gotten a lot of media attention, and many top commentators from many top publications and networks (Washington Post, Time magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) now specifically use this term.
Unlike pollsters who are up with current generational trends, Gallup is still using old school generational delineations. By lumping part of GenJones with Boomers, and part with GenX, Gallup’s generational data is seriously flawed. Several top pollsters have shown that GenJones’ political behavior and voting patterns are clearly distinct from its surrounding generations.
It is important to distinguish between the post-WWII demographic boom in births vs. the cultural generations born during that era. Generations are a function of the common formative experiences of its members, not the fertility rates of its parents. Many experts now believe it breaks down this way:
DEMOGRAPHIC boom in babies: 1946-1964
Baby Boom GENERATION: 1942-1953
Generation Jones: 1954-1965
Generation X: 1966-1978
Here is a relatively recent op-ed in USA TODAY about GenJones as the new generation of leadership:
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090127/column27_st.art.htm
May 9, 2009 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink