Alternations

I'm a little suspicious of most generational analyses, but leaving generic doubts aside there certainly is an interesting pattern in the data shown in the chart accompanying David Kirkpatrick's Times Week in Review article. You see a kind of cyclical pattern where an age cohort with lots of Democrats is replaced by a cohort with few Democrats. The interesting thing is that this isn't the sort of pattern where you have kids rejecting their parents' fashions. Instead, it looks like twentysomethings, our fiftysomething parents, and their parents are all unusually Democratic while the interstitial cohorts are the unusually Republican ones.

On the other hand, one thing the chart pretty clearly shows is that party identification doesn't actually tell us very much. Absolutely every age group except 35 and 36 year-olds contains more soi disant Democrats than Republicans. Nevertheless, Republicans clearly win plenty of elections.

Comments

Could that have something to do with growing up with a charismatic Democratic leader? My grandparents had FDR, my parents had JFK and I had Clinton.

Posted by brian | October 15, 2006 4:26 PM

Perhaps it's also about growing up with disgraced Republicans?

People who came of age under Nixon or Bush II are overwhelmingly Democrats, as are people who grew up when the Republicans were still considered the 'party of Hoover'.

Posted by Nathanael Nerode | October 15, 2006 4:40 PM

I thought it was interesting how one of the Democratic peaks was among voters who turned 20 during the exact year of the Nixon resignation.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | October 15, 2006 5:03 PM

I don't see how you can do one of these cohort analyses without breaking out the South.

Posted by yoyo | October 15, 2006 5:07 PM

Yeah, it's too narrow a peak to have to do with rebellion against parents and is more likely to be whether Reagan's rhetoric turned you on when you were an impressionable 15. What interested me more is how consistently strong Democratic party identification is, since I'm so used to thinking about that old "emerging Republican majority" and voter conservativism etc., etc. Maybe there is something to the idea that other factors, from money to the media to scaring off black voters to typical wartime identification with authority really do matter more than party and ideology.

Posted by jhaber | October 15, 2006 5:39 PM

It was Ronald Reagan and 1)his supply-side cargo cult and 2) relentless slandering of liberals.

Posted by The Fool | October 15, 2006 6:32 PM

An obvious point about this missed by e.g. Atrios is that those around age 36 are probably at the apex of multiple delusions: I am (still, one day) going to be a millionaire; I still have time to save for retirement; I can move somewhere else if I don't like the restrictions that the Religious right elements of my party want to put into effect in my state; etc etc. Those who are younger as well as those who are older feel the force of right-wing initiatives more directly, albeit of restraints on personal freedoms in the former case, of assaults on economic support in the latter.

In other words probably 36 year-olds have been and will be the most Republican age group leaving aside "generational" issues.

Posted by Ottoe | October 15, 2006 7:08 PM

It was the Reagan era mantra "greed is good" that led parents to foster a generation of college kids going there in order to get "trained" in fields of discipline where they could earn a lot of money (hence the most popular degree at the time was an MBA, for example) instead of going to get "liberally educated" to discover how to think for themselves and acquire informed opinions.

Why do I say this? Because I was a college professor from '92-'04 and saw it happen.

Posted by Limelite | October 15, 2006 7:27 PM

Regarding the first commenters observation about early exposure to "charismatic Democratic" leaders, is this why the Republicans are trying so hard today to lay all of the blame for Bush administration failures and disasters on the Clinton administration?

In fact, the "culture of corruption" Republicans recently teamed with ABC/Disney to produce and air "The Path to 9/11," a miniseries solely meant to deflect blame from the Bush administration onto the Clinton administration, even though the Clinton administration was at least 100 times more aggressive in addressing the al Qaeda terrorist threat as compared to the Bush administration prior to the 9/11 attacks.

Plus, the Republicans not only got ABC/Disney to join them in this nefarious endeavor, they got Scholastic Inc, a major supplier of materials for our nation's school children, to agree to spread this malicious lie among them. Thus, presumably, indoctrinating (while they are still young) the next generation of "culture of corruption" Republicans.

Our Democracy and our nation's children have never faced such an insidious plot as hatched by the "culture of corruption" Republicans with their naked power grabbing, their naked greed and their naked lies.

Vote Democratic Party on November 7th!!!!!

Maybe it's not too late to save our Democracy. Just maybe, if enough patriotic U.S. citizens vote for Democratic Party candidates on Nov. 7th, any attempt to "fix" the elections by the "culture of corruption" Republicans and Diebold will be negated, and we will finally have a house up in Congress (or two) both willing and able to hold accountable all the "culture of corruption" Republicans for their lies, their cheating, their stealing. The fate of our Democracy hangs in the balance.

Posted by The Oracle | October 15, 2006 7:28 PM

An obvious point about this missed by e.g. Atrios is that those around age 36 are probably at the apex of multiple delusions:

On the other hand, if you're 18 you're more likely to fall for stuff like "Social Security won't be around for you anyway, let's privatize it."

I don't think there's anything particularly delusional about being 36, although maybe I'm deluding myself because I'm 36. By that age, you're often married (and divorced and maybe married again), you typically have kids of whatever age, you have a reasonable idea of your career path, etc. You've pretty much put aside your crazy dreams like playing shortstop for the Tigers.

It all depends. If you're struggling, maybe you're more likely to vote for the party that promises you a leg up. If you're doing well, then maybe you're more likely to vote for the party that cuts your taxes, etc. But none of that is unique to 36. I'm more partial to the Reagan argument, since like him or not (and I didn't), he was very clearly the defining political figure of the age. I still remember watching Bush's first address to the nation and thinking "this squinty guy is our president now? he looks like a televangelist."

Posted by Steve | October 15, 2006 7:36 PM

Yes, people my age suck. Reagan was elected right as we turned 18, and young people just fell in line behind him. It was weird.

Thank God for punk rock.

Posted by hamletta | October 15, 2006 7:42 PM

While you can't explain the cyclical nature of Democratic generations by one generation rejecting the beliefs of their parents, you can certainly bet that the children of the dominionist religious kooks that have been so skillfully used by the Rove-ists will come to hate their parents and will see just how close they came to losing their birthright of freedom to authoritarian power-junkies and the superstitious yokels that did their bidding for a few decades.

Then, once these children of the "Religious" Right get sober, they'll almost certainly embrace a Progressive ideology that's in the direct lineage to the Enlightment, which formed our Great Republic far more than any religous fervor. That means they'll vote Democrat, and the American Taliban can go back to beating their wives and getting drunk instead of thinking they run the country.

Posted by Pope Ratzo | October 15, 2006 7:46 PM

Just wait until you're 38 like me, Steve.

But seriously. My point is not that at 36 one is maximally deluxional but that at 36 most people (as opposed to most readers of this blog) are still pretty delusional about their eventual life outcomes while also no longer being as worried as a truly young person might be about their personal freedoms (if they're a woman, for instance, they're less likely to be very personally concerned about possible access to an abortion).

So while they're neither maximally delusional about say their need for social security nor maximally desirous of personal freedoms, they have at least some of both qualities in a mix that makes them on the whole the optimal Republicans.

Posted by Ottoe | October 15, 2006 8:08 PM

Could that have something to do with growing up with a charismatic Democratic leader? My grandparents had FDR, my parents had JFK and I had Clinton.

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!

35 and 36-year olds had Reagan. (I'm 36.)

The interesting question - does it apply to ANY long-serving (e.g., 2-term) President? Will kids who are 15 this year be more likely to be Republicans because Bush is President? Or is it just Presidents who are relatively popular who have such an effect on a generation's political leanings?

Posted by Al | October 15, 2006 9:01 PM

Or is it just Presidents who are relatively popular who have such an effect on a generation's political leanings?

Reagan wasn't a relatively popular president. Of course, he was popular with huge news corporations. Maybe that's what you had in mind.

Posted by fred121 | October 15, 2006 9:51 PM

I heard David Gergen once say that you take on your grandparents' politics. I think there's some truth to that observation (and in fact I think it goes beyond politics). I was born in the 1970s, and sadly never knew either my paternal grandfather Edward Hempel (who was an alcoholic who died in the early 1970s), nor did I know my maternal grandfather (Kennie C Smith of the SE Kentucky Smiths; he died of complications from a gunshot wound sustained between the wars in the months before my mother was born).

But the GIs were good to my generation. They were the great-uncles who bought you a carton of smokes and a six pack of beer for your thirteenth birthday then took you out shooting. They were the teachers who shared unseemly details of the black dahlia case (my high school psych teacher was one of the first cops on the scene; he had a girlfriend in Vegas named "'Cile" [short for Celia I guess]), told you what kind scotch and cigarettes you should prefer (that was one a gay, alcoholic Episcopal priest), and inspired you to convert from your parents' mushy Methodist faith to high Anglicanism (not least because they taught you to read Eliot properly).

We adopted a lot of their (later-life) libertarian attitudes (which always seemed more benevolent in their hearts and minds than they were embodied by your half-indifferent parents). We took up swing dancing and hard liquor drinking. The men made it seem okay to be soft and tough at the same time, and your grandmothers taught you to respect intelligence and independence in women.

Posted by Kenneth Edward Hempel (aka Linus) | October 15, 2006 10:22 PM

I thoroughly sucked up Reagan's optimism and pseudo-toughness in the late 80's. I didn't realize I would be paying the bill for the good times until later.
The music and Bartels & James were also at fault.

Posted by teenage Republican | October 16, 2006 1:55 AM

I'm in my late thirties, right in that cohort of Reaganite Young Republicans. I'm a liberal Democrat, but I've always thought of myself as belonging to an embattled minority. My parents are liberal Democrats from the previous, Eisenhower-era slump.

I suspect that Matthew's observation, that this cycle involves people following their parents' political alignments rather than rejecting them, is key. The young Reaganites I went to school with had Eisenhower Republican parents. Their kids will probably be more conservative than the average, too, unless continued Republican incompetence pisses them off.

Posted by Matt McIrvin | October 16, 2006 2:09 AM

The Republicans had a total of three good terms: Truman, Ford, and Reagan I. They broke more or less even on Carter, GHW Bush, Eisenhower, and Nixon II. FDR, Kennedy-Johnson, Nixon I, and Clinton were the good Democratic terms.

Oddly, the Republicans lost during Nixon I and recovered slightly during Nixon II (Watergate). Maybe Nixon got sympoathy support from petty-criminal types (that's most of us) who felt that he was being persecuted.

Posted by John Emerson | October 16, 2006 7:27 AM

"I don't see how you can do one of these cohort analyses without breaking out the South."

Posted by: yoyo

Dishonestly or incompetantly. However, dealing with history probably doesn't lead to good 'Generations' stories.

Posted by Barry | October 16, 2006 9:01 AM

It also occurs to me to point out that party affiliation is one thing, and ideology and policy perspectives quite another. My parents are both registered Democrats but that doesn't mean we're the same kind of Democrats. My father comes from that interwar generation of populists that came of age during the Eisenhower years. He's more enlightened than many of his generation on social issues, but still prone to kneejerk anti-choice nostrums when pressed, and generally in favor of mid-century big government ideals (except as they relate to his generation x children, all of whom clearly just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps). My mother is the quintessential firebrand boomer liberal. In her mind I was the little conservative demon because...well, I'm not sure exactly, but I gather it had something to do with my preference for private schooling and my enjoyment of watching Mrs. Thatcher on C-SPAN. I remember her asking me bluntly (and disapprovingly) when I was thirteen or fourteen: you're a conservative aren't you? aren't you?

My cohorts (the children of the 70s) also lean Democrat (at least those born in 72 or later - the "Eminem generation"), but share more of the cynicism and libertarianism of the 60s kids. In fact, as the kids of the 1960s have become less libertarian (on civil liberties) after 9/11, 70s cohorts have retained their Reagan and Clinton-era views on limited (but in our case progressive) government. We also tend to be different from 80s cohorts in this regard. (Even though they have voted so far for Democrats by an almost double-digit margin, the children of the 80s [and 90s] are showing a greater tolerance for rollbacks of civil liberties and big government generally [note that survey a few years back showing an astonishingly high percentage of high schoolers who believed the news media should have to have government permission to print certain stories {or something to that effect}]).

So, while I'm a liberal, and a Democrat, I'm not quite the same kind of liberal, and Democrat as my parents (and in crucial ways share more of the worldview of my grandparents in later life than my parents). Where my mother has a fiery, boomer-like disdain for tradition (which in her mind, and I suspect the mind of many in her generation is inextricably associated with the repression of the pre-feminist world she was brought up in), I've always gravitated toward it (in education, religion, and a general respect for the military). Where my father seems to retain his belief that government can solve most social ills, I'm far more skeptical.

Posted by Linus | October 16, 2006 12:28 PM