from Weave

Most likely, those who identify as moderate actually hold conservative views but wont admit it and instead say they are moderate.

So if the moderates are really closet conservatives... then the conservatives must be .... closet fascists!!!!!!!!

Amazing.

The problem with polls of self-labeling by ideology is that, in an effect completely the opposite of what Weave suggested above, the word "liberal" has been demonized so strongly by Republicans and their mainstream media echo chamber that a lot of people who hold liberal views on the issues don't call themselves that. I like to put it this way: liberals outnumber self-identified liberals in America by at least two to one.

Over half of Americans back raising taxes for rich, but voters lean GOP: poll | cleveland.com

More than half support raising taxes on the rich.

Poll: Support For Same Sex Marriage Grows - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

42% support same-sex marriage.

Polls Find Wide Support For Jobless Benefit Extension - NYTimes.com

52% support extending unemployment benefits.

New High of 46% of Americans Support Legalizing Marijuana

46% support legalizing marijuana.

Americans Remain Broadly Supportive of Labor Unions

59% are supportive of labor unions.

In U.S., New High of 43% Call Afghanistan War a "Mistake"

43% oppose war in Afghanistan.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Measured by their positions on issues, there are a lot more liberals in this country than there are people who call themselves liberals. In fact, liberals outnumber self-identified liberals at least two to one.

The above is useful for a quick scan and antidote to the "20% liberal/40% conservative" nonsense. But read this report, if you don't mind challenging some preconceptions and long-held memes.

http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/s...20090526-6.pdf

In fact, again exactly opposite to what Weave says, it's likely that a lot of liberals (not conservatives) call themselves moderates because they have a skewed view of what the word "liberal" means and don't want to so label themselves. That's the most likely explanation for why exit polls consistently show the Democrats winning the self-described "moderate" vote, even this year: they won it 55/42.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

2006

2010

I see no stats on voter turnout in those links, and you made a claim respecting voter turnout. This is, therefore, not evidence to back up your claim.

You would need to show that voter turnout among Millennials for example was roughly the same in 2010 as in 2006. That's the only way you can show that the Republicans picked up some of the Millie vote this year. Otherwise, the 60%/55% Democratic win of 18-29 voters between 2006 and 2010 could be entirely explained by young liberal voters staying home in greater numbers than young Republican voters. This would also mean that young voters constituted a smaller percentage of the total vote in 2010 than in 2006.

I tried to find stats on voter turnout in 2006 by demographic and couldn't do it quickly. There's plenty of information to show that demographic groups that typically vote Democratic were a smaller part of the electorate in 2010 than in 2008, and I'm intuitively sure (but haven't found documentation for this) that the same was true between this year and '06. Voter turnout overall was down this year compared to '08, as is normally the case in a mid-term election, but it was down further among Democratic voter blocs than Republican ones. Since the Democrats won in 2006, most likely that was not so that year.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I see no stats on voter turnout in those links, and you made a claim respecting voter turnout. This is, therefore, not evidence to back up your claim.

You would need to show that voter turnout among Millennials for example was roughly the same in 2010 as in 2006. That's the only way you can show that the Republicans picked up some of the Millie vote this year. Otherwise, the 60%/55% Democratic win of 18-29 voters between 2006 and 2010 could be entirely explained by young liberal voters staying home in greater numbers than young Republican voters. This would also mean that young voters constituted a smaller percentage of the total vote in 2010 than in 2006.

I tried to find stats on voter turnout in 2006 by demographic and couldn't do it quickly. There's plenty of information to show that demographic groups that typically vote Democratic were a smaller part of the electorate in 2010 than in 2008, and I'm intuitively sure (but haven't found documentation for this) that the same was true between this year and '06. Voter turnout overall was down this year compared to '08, as is normally the case in a mid-term election, but it was down further among Democratic voter blocs than Republican ones. Since the Democrats won in 2006, most likely that was not so that year.

Comparing a presidential year to an off year is apples and oranges. Many people only vote in presidential elections. The comparison between 2006 and 2010 shows that the Age, Race, Sex, Party ID, and most other demographic characteristics of the people who voted were essentially identical. So while it is theoretically possible that all of the change was a result of voters who voted in one election and stayed home in the other, it is relatively unlikely. As I showed from the Gallup poll, the ideological shift in the vote mirrors the ideological shift in the country at large.

What I don't understand is why the left continually lies to itself about its own popularity. This is something the right does not do. If anything, they are always pessimistic about it. If you can't be realistic about where you stand, you can't improve your situation. But I guess that just goes to explain why they re-elected Nancy Pelosi in the House. Defiance of reality.

I finally found something on voter turnout among young people:

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/...el-996921.html

Nationally, the 20.4 percent turnout in the 18-29 age group didn’t even match the 25 percent in the 2006 midterm election, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. In 2008, the year President Barack Obama was elected, 51 percent of voters 18-29 voted.

Dayton-area college students suggested several reasons why only 14 percent of voters younger than 30 told an Ohio Newspaper Poll they had been “extremely interested” in the outcome on this year’s elections.
Most of the students in an Ohio government class at Wright State University on Friday said they went to the polls, but not with the engagement they felt in 2008.

Some students expressed disappointment with the administration of President Obama.

Heather Jones voted for Gov. Ted Strickland despite a sense that Obama has had
little impact during his first two years in the White House. She’s wondering, “Where’s the change?”

Phillip Wells, a Democrat, finds it “inexcusable” Obama has “backed off campaign promises” about troop reductions and gay rights legislation.

So the decline in youth support for the Democrats from 2006 to 2010 seems to be precisely matched by the 5-point drop in voter turnout.

I would expect to find similar changes in other demographic group turnout, but this does confirm my impressions about the Millennial vote. (Although of course in 2006 18-29 year olds included a lot of Xers.)

If I were to draw a guess about the discrepancy between this very clear and large drop in young voter turnout between 2006 and 2010, and the fact that the percentage of the electorate represented was the same, I would say that Millennials are a larger generation than Xers and so represented a larger total percentage of the electorate in 2010 than Xers/Millies in the same age group did in 2006. Thus, a smaller proportion of young voters in 2010 equated to a similar demographic mix in 2006.

Note the disillusionment with Obama mentioned by the clearly liberal respondent in the article. That's widespread among left-leaning voters.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Comparing a presidential year to an off year is apples and oranges. Many people only vote in presidential elections. The comparison between 2006 and 2010 shows that the Age, Race, Sex, Party ID, and most other demographic characteristics of the people who voted were essentially identical. So while it is theoretically possible that all of the change was a result of voters who voted in one election and stayed home in the other, it is relatively unlikely. As I showed from the Gallup poll, the ideological shift in the vote mirrors the ideological shift in the country at large.

What I don't understand is why the left continually lies to itself about its own popularity. This is something the right does not do. If anything, they are always pessimistic about it. If you can't be realistic about where you stand, you can't improve your situation. But I guess that just goes to explain why they re-elected Nancy Pelosi in the House. Defiance of reality.

Brian Rush has it pinned down: young Democrats who may have seemed to believe that President Obama and the 111th Congress had solved everything except curing the economic mess, and didn't come out to vote.

The people who hated President Obama and everything liberal that shook up their lives came out to vote and voted for the most reactionary candidates imaginable. The Hard Right made wild promises of an economic cure so long as people would support a plutocratic agenda that sacrificed everything for quick gain that would filter through the most rapacious of Americans to the rest of us. The electorate skewed very old in 2010 and hence reactionary.

If you are 60 years old, global warming won't do you much harm. Depletion of natural resources (especially fuel) will never hurt you because you will soon quit commuting. Wage cuts? Maybe you can get good help cheaply as caretakers in a deflationary environment with no minimum wage. The credit mess? Maybe the reverse mortgage will be very lucrative should housing prices collapse. The Religious Right is decidedly old, and old people expect all things to be taken care of -- somewhere else -- once they "are taken to Jesus" if they believe in such as the Religious Right does. Pensions? Profits are the only security behind your pension, and if people that you don't know or care about work longer and harder for less so that the firm from which you will retire, or that the profits come from transforming a manufacturing company into an importer, then who cares? Regressive taxes? Young workers will pay those. The late-midlife and elderly already have the big-ticket consumer goods that will last them until they are carted off to the nursing home or the morgue, so they won't be paying the brunt of any sales taxes that replace taxes on the incomes of the super-rich.

Many of the older voters are Boomers. In 2010 anyone in his 60s or older was born in the 1940s or earlier, and in view of the birth dearth of the 1930s and early 1940s, the over-60 voters now include the earliest part of the Baby Boom. Think of the vices that Howe and Strauss associate with Idealist generations -- that they are arrogant, selfish, and ruthless. We see this in Boomer executives, and we should expect to see much the same in the behavior of many who didn't do so well in life. If GIs had RVs with bumper stickers that read "We're spending our grandchildren's inheritance", Boomers are draining life empty for everyone who follows.

So where is the culture, vision, and principle? It may be up to Generation X and the Millennial Generation to elicit it and reward it.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I finally found something on voter turnout among young people:

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/...el-996921.html



So the decline in youth support for the Democrats from 2006 to 2010 seems to be precisely matched by the 5-point drop in voter turnout.

I would expect to find similar changes in other demographic group turnout, but this does confirm my impressions about the Millennial vote. (Although of course in 2006 18-29 year olds included a lot of Xers.)

If I were to draw a guess about the discrepancy between this very clear and large drop in young voter turnout between 2006 and 2010, and the fact that the percentage of the electorate represented was the same, I would say that Millennials are a larger generation than Xers and so represented a larger total percentage of the electorate in 2010 than Xers/Millies in the same age group did in 2006. Thus, a smaller proportion of young voters in 2010 equated to a similar demographic mix in 2006.

Note the disillusionment with Obama mentioned by the clearly liberal respondent in the article. That's widespread among left-leaning voters.

Again, there is corroborating data that shows the decline in Millenial support:

NYT: Fewer Young Voters See Themselves as Democrats

Pew: Democrats' Edge Among Millennials Slips



NYT: Young Voters Say They Feel Abandoned

Meetings of the College Democrats that attracted 200 people in 2008 now pull in a dozen. New voter registration is way down, too, and free posters of President Obama — once “the Michael Jordan” of politics, as one freshman put it — are now refused by students.

“It’s not the fad anymore,” said Jessica Kirsner, 21, a junior from Houston and vice president of the College Democrats.

...

Even on mostly liberal college campuses, the arguments against Mr. Obama have become more common. “The other day, they were blaring Rush Limbaugh in the breezeway,” said Gaurav Dhiman, 20, president of the College Democrats.

Keep in mind that these are from the NYT and Pew, both intensely left leaning sources. Even spinning it as positively as they can, they are unable to deny the shift.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

The reality is that every generational cohort for which there is polling data has started out voting for Democrats in their youth and voted increasingly for Republicans as they age.

I forgot to ask for data supporting this, too. It's at least NOT true of three generations in their youth: Lost, Silent, and Xers. That is, none of those generations "started out voting for Democrats."

But show us what you got.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I forgot to ask for data supporting this, too. It's at least NOT true of three generations in their youth: Lost, Silent, and Xers. That is, none of those generations "started out voting for Democrats."

But show us what you got.

So I do away with one argument, and it's right on to another. I looked at it in the context of this thread, but I did it in an Excel spreadsheet that I didn't save. The idea in question was to look at how each age group compared to the average voter in each election. All age groups tend to be somewhere around the eventual result in a national election, so it's only instructive to look at how they differed from that result. It is true that I started with 1976, so it doesn't cover the Silent youth vote. I'm pretty sure exit polls were not being done, or not being done to the degree they are now, when they started voting.

Short version:

- Mid-life Silents were slightly to the left of the average voter in 1976. They shifted to the right in 1980 and have generally continued that way ever since.

- Boomers were to the left of the average voter from 1976 until 1992-96, when they shifted right.

- Xers (going by the S&H years) were about 1/3 of the 18-29 vote in 1984, the only year when that age group was to the right of the average voter. The rest were late Boomers. They were right around the average from 1988-2000, except when they went to the left of average in 1996. In 2004, they went to the right of average, and they were there again in 2008.

It's tougher with Xers and Millenials because there is less data to go by at this point, but Silents and Boomers both demonstrably shifted right in mid-life. GIs, who certainly voted left in their younger years (although they may well have leaned right of the average for Eisenhower, I'm not sure), provided a large amount of Reagan's support in his two elections, and presumably also did so for Richard Nixon. They were slightly more favorable to Dukakis and Clinton.

To be sure, the Millenials in 2008 were the biggest youth gap for a Democrat since 1976. But there are a lot of qualifiers to that, particularly the massive turnout among 18-29 minority voters, which was unprecedented. As I showed above, the shift back to something more normal has already happened. And it is normal for Democrats to do better among 18-29 voters than among older voters. It's nothing new.

Once the Millenials are more entrenched in paying taxes, having kids and so forth, and once they make the connection between the prosperity of their youth and Republican economic policies (which they are likely in the process of doing as we speak), don't be surprised when they shift like every other group has.

One other point: Ronald Reagan was unquestionably the most conservative president since Calvin Coolidge, who he later named as a role model (Reagan was 18 when Coolidge left office). In other words, even as the Republican Party moved significantly to the "right" (depending on how you define it), GIs (supposedly a very left leaning generation) and Silents were their biggest supporters. Get the picture?

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Once the Millenials are more entrenched in paying taxes, having kids and so forth, and once they make the connection between the prosperity of their youth and Republican economic policies (which they are likely in the process of doing as we speak), don't be surprised when they shift like every other group has.

That's just the thing. They already see, and will continue to see, the connection between Republican economic policies and their own hard times (as anyone can see who is looking at things straight). So, we on the left can hope that the Millies will be more liberal as they age than other generations. They will move to the right as they age; the question is how much and how fast. They didn't move hardly at all to the right in 2010, if you go by actual votes. Half just stayed home.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Think of the vices that Howe and Strauss associate with Idealist generations -- that they are arrogant, selfish, and ruthless. We see this in Boomer executives, and we should expect to see much the same in the behavior of many who didn't do so well in life. If GIs had RVs with bumper stickers that read "We're spending our grandchildren's inheritance", Boomers are draining life empty for everyone who follows.

So where is the culture, vision, and principle? It may be up to Generation X and the Millennial Generation to elicit it and reward it.

No, that is wrong. It will be up to people with culture, vision and principle, not up to those Boomers and Xers that are dominated by their vices. The latter voted Republican, and make up the Republican majority on Congress and statehouses, as of Nov.2.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

They didn't move hardly at all to the right in 2010, if you go by actual votes. Half just stayed home.

Their Party ID numbers from 2008 matched their voting that year, and their Party ID numbers from 2010 matched their voting this year. That is a sign that turnout was not a factor, much less the deciding factor, in how the 18-29 age group voted in 2010.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Their Party ID numbers from 2008 matched their voting that year, and their Party ID numbers from 2010 matched their voting this year. That is a sign that turnout was not a factor, much less the deciding factor, in how the 18-29 age group voted in 2010.

According to the poll I posted before, their support for Democrats was only a point or two lower than in 2008. They did not move.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

According to the poll I posted before, their support for Democrats was only a point or two lower than in 2008. They did not move.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. The exit polls I posted are the only ones there are. It's done by one organization, on behalf of all the major news outlets. Voters 18-29 went for Democrats 60-38% in 2006, and only 55-42% in 2010. That is in elections for the House. I mean, you could argue that Millenials replaced Xers, but that would mean Millenials are more conservative than late wave Xers are...

I am highly amused at the Boomers/Xers' attempts to parse the Millie vote and fit what happened into their own nice, neat narrative.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

So I do away with one argument, and it's right on to another.

Not so fast. The material you presented just above was about party identification, not ideology. Millennials remain the most liberal generation in the country. If they feel abandoned by Democrats, that is A) something I already noted myself, and B) due to the fact that Democrats have moved further to the right in their governing than Millennials like or expected.

You have not "done away" with any thing. In addition, I already showed that there WAS a significant drop in voter turnout among Millennials between 2006 and 2010, which pretty much blows your entire argument on that point out of the water.

Xers (going by the S&H years) were about 1/3 of the 18-29 vote in 1984, the only year when that age group was to the right of the average voter.

So it looks to me like you have studied only three generations in this regard, Boomers, Xers, and Millennials, and found that two of the three were to the left of the average voter in their youth and the other to their right. How does this support your thesis? Shouldn't Xers have been to the left of the average voter in their youth if this was a function of age rather than generation?

You're trying to argue here that Millennials will cease to be liberal voters and become conservative voters as they grow older, and thus not cause a lasting shift of the national center to the left. (Note that this is not the same as saying they will grow more conservative as they get older; in some ways that's inevitable, but it does NOT mean they will become anything that could reasonably be called "conservative voters." They would have to age a LONG way to the right to do that. And bear in mind that as they move into older phases of life they will replace older voters who are more conservative than they are.) In support of this, you posit that Millennials are liberal voters not because they are Millies but because they are young, and you claim that all voters start out voting for Democrats and vote for Republicans as they get older. But it seems that your own data dispute this. Clearly the economic conservatism of Xers is generational and not a function of age. Why would you expect the liberalism of Millennials to be any different?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

No, that is wrong. It will be up to people with culture, vision and principle, not up to those Boomers and Xers that are dominated by their vices. The latter voted Republican, and make up the Republican majority on Congress and statehouses, as of Nov.2.

There may have been some sloppy writing on my part. Nobody can reasonably expect people who have been arrogant, ruthless, and selfish throughout their lives to suddenly become humble, restrained, and charitable. Boomers are now mostly too old to make basic changes in personality, and the behavior of their economic elites enforces the vices of those elites. Corporate board rooms are unlikely to change until the Boomers start retiring en masse and the Generation X executives find that they can't get away with what Boomer (and until recently late-wave Silent) could extract. Generation X may be the sorts to decide that what is best for all is more important than what is best for some select few.

The Boomer leaders at the end of the Crisis Era will more be chosen by younger X and Millennial adults instead of by Boomers. The cultured, visionary, philosophical type who isn't so doctrinaire and narcissistic will be more acceptable to people who have no stake in the enrichment and pampering of extant elites and no stake in the sectarian squabbles of Boomers (except to see the end of those squabbles). America has much to change, one part of which is top-down management that sees the little man as an expendable cog in an inhuman machine.

Karl Rogue, Dick Armey, and their ilk played to vices, superstitions, and fears by buying the discussion so that they could fill the airwaves with Orwellian propaganda. Americans are new to that, and whether that technique can succeed in 2012 depends upon how quickly Americans realize how badly they are getting the shaft. America elected some loud near-fascists, if not loud outright fascists, in 2010, and they are going to have far more influence on the political process in the 112th Congress. If those right-wingers make fools of themselves they will likely fail to get re-elected. If they succeed at fooling enough people, then maybe this Crisis will feature torture chambers, labor camps, and shooting pits in the Evil Empire -- only this time the Evil Empire will be on the eastern shore of the Pacific and the western shore of the Atlantic in the lower-to-middle latitudes.

The Hard Right is perfectly suited to the dangerous personality best understood as a sheep-hyena hybrid... the personality sheepishly docile to its leaders but hyena-like toward those that its masters declare the Enemy.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Again, there is corroborating data that shows the decline in Millenial support:

NYT: Fewer Young Voters See Themselves as Democrats

Pew: Democrats' Edge Among Millennials Slips



NYT: Young Voters Say They Feel Abandoned

Keep in mind that these are from the NYT and Pew, both intensely left leaning sources. Even spinning it as positively as they can, they are unable to deny the shift.

Extrapolation is a risky proposition. If you drew a line extending the growth in stock market prices in the spring and summer of 1929 as the inevitable wave of the future, then you would have predicted 1950s-style prosperity in the 1930s instead of what happened. If you saw the fall of GOP presidential support from 1960 to 1968, then you could have never expected a Nixon victories in 1968 and 1972. If you could have seen the decline in wins for the dreadful Detroit leading to the 43-119 season of 2003, you might have expected the 2006 Tigers to lose nearly every game that they played (they made the World Series in 2006).

The antidote to the vicious right-wing propaganda of 2010 is more Hope and Change rhetoric that offers a more optimistic future than does the top-down, trickle-down ideology of the Hard Right. I can't imagine Barack Obama having the capacity to do anything else. Besides, you have yet to see what the Republican majority does in the House. If you think that the Democratic majorities made fools of themselves between 2006 and now, then wait until you see Michelle Bachmann grilling people for not being "American" enough because they show no love for American corporate elites or prefer Mozart to country music.

(I confess! My musical tastes proclaim that I am a Czech or a Pole, and not a "real" American!)

I took a look at the Pew poll that JPT linked above. Here is a quote from same:

While the Republican Party picked up support from Millennials during 2009, this age group continues to favor the Democratic Party more than do other generations. And the underlying political values of this new generation continue to be significantly more liberal than those of other generations on many measures.1

Aside from partisanship, this distinctiveness is most evident in the Millennials' social values, but can also be seen in greater support for government in general, and somewhat lower levels of support for an assertive national security policy compared with other generations. On other important dimensions, however, such as attitudes and values about business and about the social safety net, young people today are not particularly distinctive.

I appreciate the link and will be reading the full report. It's obviously of relevance to this site.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

You have not "done away" with any thing. In addition, I already showed that there WAS a significant drop in voter turnout among Millennials between 2006 and 2010, which pretty much blows your entire argument on that point out of the water.

If the Millenial vote in 2010 mirrored Millenial Party ID among the population at large (which it did), then it is safe to say that your argument (that a disproportionate number of conservative Millenials voted and liberal ones stayed home) is false. It's that simple.

So it looks to me like you have studied only three generations in this regard, Boomers, Xers, and Millennials, and found that two of the three were to the left of the average voter in their youth and the other to their right. How does this support your thesis? Shouldn't Xers have been to the left of the average voter in their youth if this was a function of age rather than generation?

You're trying to argue here that Millennials will cease to be liberal voters and become conservative voters as they grow older, and thus not cause a lasting shift of the national center to the left. (Note that this is not the same as saying they will grow more conservative as they get older; in some ways that's inevitable, but it does NOT mean they will become anything that could reasonably be called "conservative voters." They would have to age a LONG way to the right to do that. And bear in mind that as they move into older phases of life they will replace older voters who are more conservative than they are.) In support of this, you posit that Millennials are liberal voters not because they are Millies but because they are young, and you claim that all voters start out voting for Democrats and vote for Republicans as they get older. But it seems that your own data dispute this. Clearly the economic conservatism of Xers is generational and not a function of age. Why would you expect the liberalism of Millennials to be any different?

Maybe I didn't explain it clearly enough. From 1976-2008, there was only one election in which the 18-29 group was to the right of the average voter: 1984. That year, someone born in 1961 (S&H's first year for X) would have been 23. So those were mostly late Boomers. If you use the more common Boom/X dates, they were all Boomers. In 1996, when the entire 18-29 group was made up of core Xers, they went much more strongly for Clinton than any other age group.

I think it is also clear, despite the lack of historical exit polling, that GIs became more conservative in midlife. Of course the Democratic Party also shifted dramatically to the left in the late 60s/early 70s, but the Republicans also shifted right. Importantly, Reagan did not propose undoing much of the New Deal, but he assaulted the Great Society severely. So while the GIs remained defensive about the New Deal policies that came out of the 4T, they did not have much use for any of the "change" (i.e. liberalism) that happened after the 1940s.

The most important thing to recognize though, is that all age groups are generally somewhere near the average in each election. When a candidate wins, they usually win every age group. So even if you could discern a general leaning among a cohort, it is not likely to be determinative or predictive when it comes to who wins elections. If you looked solely at which party they've cast the most presidential votes for over the last 34 years, every generation except Millenials (who have only voted in the last two presidential elections) would look like die hard Republicans.

The truth is what I stated. People are more likely to vote for Democrats when they're young, and Republicans as they get older. The break point when that shift occurs appears to coincide roughly with S&H's midlife life stage. I recognize that you don't want to take my word for it, so I encourage you to look into it yourself. It requires a pretty significant amount of number crunching (including trying to sort out the S&H cohorts from exit poll data).

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I took a look at the Pew poll that JPT linked above. Here is a quote from same:



I appreciate the link and will be reading the full report. It's obviously of relevance to this site.

As I said when I posted it, Pew is a very left wing organization, and it generally "interprets" its data in the most favorable way possible for the left. So keep that in mind.

The GIs did not move to the Right, the Awakening simply caused them simply left them behind on social issues.

Originally Posted by Odin

The GIs did not move to the Right, the Awakening simply caused them simply left them behind on social issues.

I'd agree. President Reagan once said as much: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party... The Democratic Party left me".

Translation: the GIs were already further to the right than the Silent and especially the Boomers on social issues.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

If the Millenial vote in 2010 mirrored Millenial Party ID among the population at large (which it did), then it is safe to say that your argument (that a disproportionate number of conservative Millenials voted and liberal ones stayed home) is false. It's that simple.

No, it's NOT that simple. You are assuming that the Millennial vote total was the same size w/r/t the voting public as a whole in 2006 as in 2010, and that's an unproven assumption and apparently incorrect. If young voters constituted a larger portion of the potential electorate in 2010 than in 2006, that could account for the facts, both demonstrated, that a smaller proportion of young people voted in 2010 than in 2006 (20% versus 25%), AND that they constituted the same percentage of the total electorate (about 11%).

I knew this was possible going in. Millennials are the product of a mini-baby-boom, which is why they were for a while called "echo boomers." It stands to reason that as the core of the generation comes of age it will represent an increased share of the total electorate. That's why I was looking for stats on voter turnout for Millennials in 2006. I had them for 2010 and for 2008 but couldn't find them for the earlier mid-term. I finally did and it confirmed my suspicions: fewer young people voted in 2010 than in 2006. I can't prove that the ones who stayed home were disproportionately Democratic voters but it makes sense given the "enthusiasm gap," and also given the thoughts I found expressed on liberal discussion sites.

That's what represents the chief difference between 2006/2008 and 2010.

Maybe I didn't explain it clearly enough. From 1976-2008, there was only one election in which the 18-29 group was to the right of the average voter: 1984. That year, someone born in 1961 (S&H's first year for X) would have been 23. So those were mostly late Boomers.

Whether we're talking Xers or Boomers, your assertion that young people always vote to the left of the electorate as a whole is not consistent with this observation.

Boomers are by no means clearly a "liberal" generation; we're severely divided, and younger Boomers tend to be more conservative than older ones (obviously I'm an exception to that rule). If young voters came out more strongly for Reagan than older ones, that shows a clear conservative bent among late boomers/early Xers (or "Jonesers" if you will) in their youth, which runs solidly against your argument that today's liberal youth voting pattern is age-based rather than generational.

Reagan versus Mondale showed a clear ideological divide, since Reagan was strongly identified with conservative ideology. Clinton versus Dole did not show the same. Apart from his party membership, there was really nothing to identify Clinton as a liberal, nor in fact was he particularly liberal. On the other hand, Clinton was, compared to Bush or Dole, young, and also charismatic. This was a classic generational lineup, old Civic versus rising Idealist. Clinton seemed cool compared to stuffy old Bush/Dole. Also, remember that Xers, although they are economically conservative, are socially pretty liberal, and would not find Clinton objectionable based on the charges leveled against him (adultery, draft-dodging, pot smoking); in fact, this might make a lot of young Xers perversely more likely to vote for him.

I think it is also clear, despite the lack of historical exit polling, that GIs became more conservative in midlife.

In the absence of historical exit polling or some other way of identifying objectively how they voted, what's clear is that you can't say that this is clear.

I suppose you can say that an old-age vote for Reagan looks conservative compared to a young vote for Roosevelt, but bear in mind that those were not close elections, and GIs were as disenchanted with Carter as most other voters.

Of course the Democratic Party also shifted dramatically to the left in the late 60s/early 70s, but the Republicans also shifted right. Importantly, Reagan did not propose undoing much of the New Deal, but he assaulted the Great Society severely.

Did he really?

Let's examine these assertions in detail. You say the Democrats "shifted dramatically to the left" in the Awakening. On social issues and foreign policy, that's the case. On economic issues, it's not; in fact, the Democrats shifted a bit to the right here. You say the Republicans "also shifted right." On foreign policy, that's the case; on social issues, they did so as a matter of rhetoric and campaign style but not in terms of actual policy; on economics it was the other way around (i.e., actual Republican policy moved more to the right than rhetoric and campaigning).

You say Reagan did not propose undoing the New Deal -- that's true as far as proposals are concerned but not true as far as actions -- but then again, most people don't understand what the New Deal actually consisted of or how Reagan dismantled just about all of it except for Social Security. Still, we're talking about election results so perhaps proposals are more important than actions here.

You say he campaigned fiercely against the Great Society, but that's not clearly true. The most important parts of LBJ's liberal domestic achievements were the Civil Rights Act and Medicare, and Reagan never touched either of those. Nor did he give more than lip service to going after Johnson's poverty-relief programs. About the only thing he campaigned against from that era was affirmative action, and even there he really didn't do much.

Remember I said above that Millennials are actually culturally conservative, but in reference to a changed cultural status quo? The same, I believe, was true of GIs, which is why our Awakening made the country significantly more liberal in particular ways than they were comfortable with. This doesn't show a shift in GI attitudes to the right as they got older; it shows, if anything, a failure to keep up with the nation's changes, particularly in areas of culture and values. The main political achievements of their lifetime that were visible to GIs were Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, and America's superpower status. Reagan did not challenge any of the first three, and actually strengthened the third. (There were other things that Reagan did which were more damaging to the New Deal economic system, but those went mostly invisible and misunderstood, and didn't impact retired people significantly anyway.)

If Millennials follow a similar pattern, they may in the late Awakening to come vote for a conservative backlash candidate who nevertheless leaves the significant liberal achievements of this saeculum untouched, and mostly calls for a halt to the Awakening turmoil (which is really what Reagan did). If the nation makes sufficient progress between now and then to push Millennials into the role of old fogies, that will be satisfactory.

Oh, and GIs voted for Clinton, too. Just thought I'd point that out in passing.