Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fight them, without becoming them!

So many bastards, so little time.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

In my day, never was longer.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Let’s finish the job.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

I really should read my own blog.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2018 / Young Voters entering middle age

Young Voters entering middle age

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I’m 37. I’m not quite a Generation X’er and I am definately not a Millenial. I bought my first cell phone my junior year of college and I am profoundly aware of the sound of a 1200 BAUD modem connecting to the UMass Lowell Unix servers as well as having many memories of yelling at my sister who wanted to talk on the phone as I was reading soc.history.what-if.

My first presidential vote was for Al Gore. By 2006, I was a super-voter. Since 2004 I have missed one election (Pennsylvania 2017 primary) as I had moved to North Carolina by then and was in the process of switching my registration. I am weird. For my cohort, I had a much higher probability of voting than my matched control peers.

My peers and I have always leaned Democratic as a cohort. We are now entering into prime voting participation ages. The cohorts behind me still don’t vote their numbers yet but they lean even more heavily Democratic than my cohort. Some of it is a function of race/ethnicity confounding age but there is still a dramatic implication that their political formation was Bush-Obama-Trump.

It won’t matter too much in 2018 or 2020 but there is a massive python lump of voters coming through who lean Dem but will begin turning out at higher rates just as Republican base voters decrease in numbers due to differential age related mortality.

Reader Interactions

51Comments

  3. 3.

    Patricia Kayden

    I think the fear is that millenials don’t necessarily come out to vote the way we hope they will. Not sure if they’re a dependable voting block just yet.

  5. 5.

    Yutsano

    The cohorts behind me still don’t vote their numbers yet but they lean even more heavily Democratic than my cohort

    Chickens, counting before hatching. There are still young folks being taught how to be conservative all over as well. And the pendulum will swing away from the Democrats again.

    EDIT: FYWP.

  6. 6.

    Bill Arnold

    It won’t matter too much in 2018 or 2020 but there is a massive python lump of voters coming through who lean Dem but will begin turning out at higher rates just as Republican base voters decrease in numbers due to differential age related mortality.

    OK, I laughed.

  7. 7.

    Starfish

    @Patricia Kayden: I am a couple of years older than David who is a couple of years older than my sister. The Millennials are great. They are moving social progress forward so quickly that we are having trouble keeping up. They are killing consumerist culture. Partially because they want to and partially because they are broke.

    I failed to vote in the election that David writes about because I tried to vote absentee, and I didn’t read the information that the state sent me about that.

    Voting really is harder for young people who may be moving around frequently.

  8. 8.

    Matt McIrvin

    I’m already wondering about the kids my daughter’s age, 10, 11, 12 years old. A lot of them are little Trumpies now, but a lot aren’t too, and they may eventually see the fall.

  9. 9.

    Starfish

    @Matt McIrvin: I worry about them judging us over why so much time and money was spent on developing social media sites and so little money was spent developing solutions to climate change.

  15. 15.

    No Drought No More

    “..there is a massive python lump of voters coming through who lean Dem but will begin turning out at higher rates just as Republican base voters decrease in numbers due to differential age related mortality”.

    Maybe, maybe not. I’m old enough to well remember the election of 1972, and how the “youth vote” was predicted to be real electoral asset that favored George McGovern.

    Times also change, and Americans are shamefully proficient at extending ourselves historical amnesty, and by extension, entire political classes.. It boils down to an attitude: “Even if we fucked up, we’re still Americans, so fuck off, fuckface, we don’t fucking care”.

    For example, I asked high school teachers if they would endorse an application to register as a C.O. if need be. They all were happy to agree, every last one of them (my peers were on the same basic wavelength, too). It never came close to that happening, although my class was an invited guest in America’s last draft.

    And yet, within a decade Reagan reinstated registration, and high school kids didn’t bat an eye. They didn’t bat an eye because they didn’t know the score; they didn’t know the score because they had no comprehension of The Machine, or even much memory of the fall of Saigon. Unfortunately, a huge percentage of those huckleberry’s continued to lead lives of the politically ignorant, and do up to this very moment.

    Which is not to say I’m pessimistic about your generation, and those you cite as entering their voting prime. I’m not, in fact. Trump is a deal breaker in too many profound ways for too many people; the political repercussions won’t be anything less than equally profound. Still, I’d of thought a lot more people would have wised up after the Bush/Cheney plot to war was exposed as the big lie it was, and you’re old enough to remember how that went down. I guess we’ll have to wait and see, huh?

  18. 18.

    Starfish

    @Major Major Major Major: You are not tolerating middle managers with marketing degrees selling you flavored cardboard as food.

    Malls were dying already, and I am not sure why you guys are getting blamed for it. But the death of malls is great even though we can be sentimental about arcades and what they used to be for the social lives of young teens.

  19. 19.

    jl

    And, I guess, turning 30 by 2020, GOP presidents remembered are Dub and Trump, and Democratic president is Obama.
    Dub might be a much better person than Trump in most ways (Not many who aren’t), but his administration was mostly disasters, and some of the disasters were way big.

    Unlike Trump, Dub was capable of some good policy proposals, and some actual accomplishments. But most of those ((like immigration reform) were shot down by his own party, or were cancelled,damaged or slandered when they emerged in final form under Obama, when his own party found it convenient to sabotage them and blame them on Obama. And the rest were rather small or obscure technical things what won’t shape public memory. So Dub admin will not be remembered fondly, and shouldn’t be.

  20. 20.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Yutsano:
    Same as it ever was. I would be happy if the pendulum stays mostly left for the next 30-40 years. Even the Roosevelt Coalition didn’t last forever.

    I’ve always been confused. I was born in 1995. What cohort am I supposed to be in? 95 is a cutoff year by many definitions.

  22. 22.

    Czanne

    @Matt McIrvin: at 9-12, most kids are deep in tribal identification mode — if their church, family or other deep influencer is telling them to be conservative, they will do so because it’s what their tribe says is right. Around 13-15, a whole whack of them flip hard into disidentification mode, where they will identify hard with anything that opposes the tribe. In my experience, the hard disidentifiers are the ones most likely to have been hard identifiers only a couple years before, and often because those kids have a deep, introspective moral compass, and something in their tribal identification betrayed them. (Devotion cuts a lot of scars.) (This also works the other way – hippies parent an Alex P Keaton.) Around 17-20, another group breaks out of the tribe, often in their first year of college or first year not at home.

    Which is the long way of saying I do not actually worry much about the Jr High Republicans. By High School, half of them are doing something else, and by college, there’s only a couple left.

  24. 24.

    Sab

    @Major Major Major Major: Diamonds aren’t just frivolous. They are evil. The men who mine them live like ants. Why on earth would anyone want to wear such a thing, subjecting other humans to such conditions, just for a bit of expensive sparkle on finger, ear or neck.

  25. 25.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Starfish:
    That is one of the ultimate criticisms of capitalism ain’t it? A lot of stupid shit gets lots of time and resources thrown at it to turn a profit, but often the stuff that really matters such as climate change and global hunger, get ignored. We have the resources, collectively, to solve all of these problems. I don’t think we have the political will. Too many selfish ignorant people. Putin’s bullshit doesn’t help either. He’s actively helping to destroy the world’s hope for a better future for all humanity just so he can make some more billions and play Supreme Leader.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    @Czanne:

    I was somehow a strong liberal from an early age while my dad and brother were strong conservatives. My mother died of cancer when I was 7, but I think she was probably my “strong influencer” and I somehow retained that for the next 40 years despite all of the pressure otherwise.

    Also, oddly, I think the Catholic Church of my childhood influenced me — I grew up in the church where we still sang Beatles songs during Mass. Those days are long gone, of course, and were gone by the time I was in high school.

  30. 30.

    StringOnAStick

    @Mnemosyne: I was born a liberal I suspect, since I can’t remember ever being anything but sympathetic to liberal causes. My parents always were very conservative and are basically Birchers at this point, utterly in thrall to FOX. It has been a source of conflict between us ever since I can remember and has only worsened with time to the point where I simply can’t stand being around them, they are so consumed with hate and go for their usual “scream at the kid until she agrees” tactic that quit working over 40 years ago. I hope the love they have for Limbaugh and O’Reilly is going to sustain them in their last years because I sure as hell am not going to; I am done. My oldest sister the southern Baptist rethug is their lifeline. I guess they can all sit around and discuss who Jesus allows them to hate today.

  34. 34.

    aliasofwestgate

    I’m 40. So i’m in the latter half of Gen X. The ones who had dial up just as high school was ending, and my first vote was for Clinton in 1996. I was in College Radio when the news of the Lewinsky allegations came via fax/wire for me to read on air. I thought it was bullshit then, and i laughed my ass off when they found out Newt was a hypocrite of the highest order. I haven’t changed at all. But i’m also mixed race, which makes me very much a Democrat and pretty much will be for as long as they walk with those of us of color. I don’t have an iPhone (never wanted one), but i do have a laptop, tablet, and a cellphone. I’ll eventually get a smartphone but not anytime soon. My budget doesn’t support one yet. I grew up in a Democrat home. My dad was Union too. My mom, (still) a Canadian, is very much NDP. I joke that i’m so far left that they don’t have a party for me. I’ve tested as NDP on some of the internet tests on that stuff, which amuses me a lot. I vote on off years when i can, but most definitely vote on Presidential and downticket dems. I’d do more activism beyond lurker, but i’m my Mom’s caretaker for now. So not a lot of time, and more taking care of myself and her.

  36. 36.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Czanne: My cohort had a lot of high-school-aged Reagan fans. There was a real conservative youth movement then. But I don’t think they were really Alex P. Keatons rebelling against their parents–I think their parents weren’t hippie boomers at all; they were mostly conservative, Nixon-voting Silent Generation types.

  37. 37.

    catclub

    @Mnemosyne: also lab diamonds are better. and they should be less costly, as well.

    as far as mining things that are basically useless and then putting a high price on them:
    Bitcoin! The mining takes huge (and ever growing) amounts of energy.

  39. 39.

    flyingdonut

    My daughter turns 18 in August 2018. ALL of her friends – ALL of them – hate Trump and romanticize Obama.

  40. 40.

    Ocotillo

    But don’t a lot of these young liberals end up transforming into old conservatives over time? The young have always been more liberal than the olds so that has to take place. I guess, some of them, take on the IGMFY attitude once they accumulate some assets.

  41. 41.

    msdc

    @Ocotillo: Not really. Cohorts tend to stay fairly consistent over time. The WW2 generation were always more liberal, and the oldest Gen-Xers were Reaganites when they started voting in the 1980s (happily, they’ve been swamped by younger Xers who grew up on the Clintons). The political leanings a person has formed by age 20 usually stay with them for life.

  42. 42.

    NYCMT

    My first election was in 1994 when I voted for Mario against George. And every election since, save 2001.

    @David Andersen – *when* were you on SHWI? Check my obfuscated email…

  44. 44.

    DHD

    @aliasofwestgate: You need to move to Québec if you’re off the left end of the chart for the rest of Canada. We have some parties for you!

    I’m in about the same cohort as David Anderson and probably a lot of you. I remember casting my first vote for … somebody from the NDP … in Ottawa Centre in 1997, even though I still kind of thought of myself as an anarchist at the time. Didn’t become a SuperVoter ™ until I moved to Pittsburgh for a decade literally days after Bush I got elected. Yes, I vote in both countries (does this mean that I am a foreign power interfering in American elections?) though only in the statewide and federal ones in the US these days. The American voting system continues to confuse and mystify me although those old steampunkish mechanical voting machines were pretty freaking cool…

    I would definitely say I’ve become more small-c conservative over time, which just means that I’m now really into electoral politics (especially at the local level) and about 75% on board with a Scandinavian-style social-market economy combined with punishing carbon taxes, as opposed to burning “the system” to the ground. This was definitely helped along by the shock of Bush vs. Gore. I suspect today’s Tumblr revolutionaries who grew up under Obama will rapidly undergo a similar political evolution, which is good news for everybody.

  45. 45.

    Matt McIrvin

    @DHD: So… is it true that Justin Trudeau’s government is totally corrupt and on the verge of disintegration in massive scandal, as I’ve heard a Canadian lefty elsewhere claim? Or is this the Canadian version of revolutionary brocialism? It’s hard for me to gauge.

  46. 46.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    just as Republican base voters decrease in numbers due to differential age related mortality.

    Or just fading out for being to sick to be involved in politics. I was wondering how that effected the Virginia vote.

  47. 47.

    randy khan

    @No Drought No More:

    Draft registration actually was reinstated under Carter. I remember because I had to register in the first round. (Then the Selective Service screwed up and kept telling me I hadn’t registered even though they’d sent me a registration card. They literally bothered me for years until I realized I need to send a copy of my response letter and registration card to my Senator. Then they straightened it out.)

    ETA: I see a comment above saying it was related to Iran. I think it actually was Afghanistan. People sometimes forget how big a deal the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was, but it also was the reason for the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

  48. 48.

    drkrick

    Draft registration was absolutely reinstated by Carter in response to Afghanistan, although it may have taken until after Reagan came in to implement parts of it. I remember wandering around campus the night it was announced taking advantage of the fact that Afghanistan substituted nicely for Vietnam in the songs we’d learned 10 years earlier.

    As it turned out, I was born in the small window between WWII/Cold War draft and the Carter draft that didn’t have to register. I guess they figured we’d been exposed to so much draft avoidance as kids that it was easier to skip us.

  49. 49.

    drkrick

    On the generational cohorts, they’d been defined 20 year intervals starting in 1765 until there was some movement to give the Millennials only 10 years. Doesn’t make much sense to me and I’ve never heard a coherent explanation. We just seem to be trying to screw you guys every other way, I guess this is just part of the pattern.

  50. 50.

    Greg

    @drkrick:

    It’s all marketing horse crap. But the inception of millennials in the 80-82 fuzziness seems pretty standard. There’s a hard break culturally in 95-00 with the explosion of internet access and then again in 07-10 with the introduction and sudden ubiquity of the Hitchhiker’s Guide.

  51. 51.

    DHD

    @Matt McIrvin: They have broken a couple of really big promises, in particular the promise to reform the electoral system, which really let down me and other lefties who didn’t vote for them but were willing to give them a chance since they were so much better than The Harper Government ™.

    Not really clear that hurts Trudeau, but his finance minister’s various conflicts of interest just might. Unlike in the US, the corporate élite doesn’t exclusively favour one party up here, so the federal Liberals (not to mention the provinical ones too, who are not actually the same party) have a lot of skeletons stashed away in various tax-sheltered closets at home and abroad, and it is not controversial to point this out.

    This is unlikely to result in massive disintegration because they are the “natural party of government”, everybody already knows they are kind of corrupt, and most people don’t really seem to care. On the other hand, the electoral system that Trudeau decided not to change has a tendency to create weird surprises.

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