Fine Young Social Democrats

The New York Times offers us the latest evidence of a youth movement toward the left with some salient finding on a couple of big issues reproduced below. One thing that writeups of these findings tend to miss out on is that the cohort of 18-29 year-olds contains a substantially smaller proportion of white people than does the 30+ cohort. Viewed through that lens, combined with basic knowledge of race's heavy role in US politics, the left-leaning tendencies of the youngest voting cohort aren't that surprising. The contrast with the substantially more conservative "Generation X" cohort is, however, telling.

In some ways, this brings us back to the immigration bill. If it seems a bit baffling as to why some Republicans are so devoted to trying to push something through even though it tears the GOP apart and the bill seems unpopular, I think these facts about the changing ethnic composition of the United States probably keep some Republican strategists up late at night worrying. The GOP needs to get Latinos to vote more like white people -- at least like white people of equivalent income levels -- or else they're looking at big problems.

Comments

go, generation awesome!

Posted by belle waring | June 27, 2007 10:47 AM

Hm. I don't think that non-whiteness is positively correlated with support for gay marriage. I suspect that's a pure generational attitude shift, not a changing-demogaphics effect, even if the latter effect is part of the explanation for any overall shift left.

Posted by Jacob T. Levy | June 27, 2007 10:49 AM

Well the numbers of Whites may be having an impact but most surveys I have seen suggest that Blacks are more socially conservative than Whites. It is not Gay marriage that inclines them to vote Democrat but race. The race issue means that Blacks are not likely to vote for the Republicans any time soon. But that means that while they may need Latino voters over the long term, in the short term they can rely on ageing White voters. Older voters are more likely to vote and vote to the Right anyway. In the medium term, Latino immigration is likely to cause a split between Black and Latino voting blocks. This is a problem for the Democrats and it is likely, I'd think, that the Republicans will pick up some of those pieces. You can see arguments over racial preferences and government jobs (not to mention prison gang cred) in California already.

What is interesting about this issue is how the Republicans have managed to link the interests of the poorest Americans in rural and southern parts with the interests of the richest and businesses. Reagan and Bush Junior both came to power on the two extremes of the Bell curve. This is an issue that splits them. Businesses want cheap labor. Poor Whites don't need the competition and don't like to see laws broken. I'd go with the South if I were them.

Posted by HeiGou | June 27, 2007 10:52 AM

Too make sense of these data, it would be nice to see how people's views tend to change as they get older. The stereotype is that people get more conservative, but by how much? Still, these results are good news.

Posted by Jim W | June 27, 2007 11:11 AM

I wonder if this chart is any different now than it was say 20 or 30 or 40 years ago (asking the relevant questions of the time). The 17-29 age group, or however youth is broadly defined, tend to be more liberal than their older counterparts in general over time. After all there is the adage, "If you are young and conservative you have no heart, and if you are old and liberal you have no brain"

Posted by JW | June 27, 2007 11:11 AM

Isn't the under 30 crowd always more progressive than the over 30 crowd? The problem is (a) they don't vote as much; and (b) they don't seem to preserve all their progressive ideals as they get older.

Maybe that's only true for fiscal matters however. I think on social issues, this country really is headed in the right direction. I even hear young conservatives saying in twenty years, gay marriage won't be an issue at all because it will be so accepted.

Posted by Max | June 27, 2007 11:15 AM

Wouldn't this be just another example of a Thermadorian reaction? Generation X is more conservative because the world they grew up in was a reaction to the liberal excesses of the 1960s/70s. The kids now are the beginning of the reaction to the excesses of conservatism of the 2000s. As the pendulum swings, it looks good for our side.

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | June 27, 2007 11:19 AM

I unfortunately side with Jacob Levy on this. It is true that Latino voters are more likely to vote Democratic, but this has substantially more to do--I posit--with cultural hostility between segments of the Republican coalition and the Latino community. But I suspect Latinos are more socially conservative than whites on some issues like gay marriage. Sadly.

Posted by pedro | June 27, 2007 11:20 AM

I was going to make the point that Jacob T. Levy makes above. Minority ethnic status doesn't correlate with support for rights for gays.

I also agree with Max about social issues and economic issues. If enough of those 20-year-olds who might be facing some uncertainty today are covered in ten years, that health insurance question might change. But we're on a glide path towards acceptance of teh gayness. It is, as Max and Jacob point out, a generational thing.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | June 27, 2007 11:22 AM

I'd strongly second a couple of the other commenters on the gay marriage issue.

For example, in huge CA Latinos are the ethnic group most *opposed* to legalizing gay marriage, as indicated by the demographic breakdowns of the 2000 state initiative and various other data. On the other hand, since leading CA Latino politicians are generally part of the liberal/Democratic establishment, they heavily support gay marriage for reasons of coalitional politics and also fund-raising, which partially masks the actual views of their ordinary co-ethnics.

Basically, in nearly all ideological respects, Latinos are pretty close to ordinary white working-class voters of similar income, religuosity, education. And truck-drivers and other blue-collar whites are not exactly the core constituency for gay marriage in America today...

Frankly, I think the Republican support for the Immigration Bill is mostly a mixture of the very strong self-interest of the powerful business lobbies (and their paid political consultants) together with the ignorance/gullibility/stupidity of the other Republican factions.

Posted by RKU | June 27, 2007 11:30 AM

This makes me think that the description of Gen X as the Singles/Reality Bites generation was just totally inaccurate. Yes, perhaps that was accurate for a certain set of twenty something who went to liberal arts colleges, but it appears Reagan and Carter (and maybe Perot) had much more impact on the political views of Gen X.

Gen Y, meanwhile, has lived through Clinton and Bush. It's really not a contest.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | June 27, 2007 11:30 AM

I think that the first question re: health care might be a tad misleading, because it presents only two policy options: 1) the status quo or 2) government health care. I'd be curious to see the results if other policy options for health care were presented (e.g. mandatory private insurance; tax credits for self-insurance; option to enroll in medicare or choose private insurance; etc.) Single payer might not do so well then.

Posted by Alex Knapp | June 27, 2007 11:30 AM

Hey, when I was in my early twenties, in the mid 70's, most of the people my age thought marijuana would be legal long before now.

- echoing the comments above about youth always tending to be more liberal.

Posted by GPS | June 27, 2007 11:43 AM

One problem is that when you're a poor college student, "taxpayer-funded" can sound an awful lot like "free."

Comparing social issues across age ranges is useful, but comparing pocketbook issues is less so.

Posted by Steve | June 27, 2007 11:48 AM

Another poll where the syntax of the questions almost guarantees the results.

To begin. Who are the Americans to be covered by the single payer plan? Illegal aliens? Were citizens polled? Voters?

Look at the choice in the first question. As people grow older they realize someone else - 'taxpayers' - don't pay for government services. They do.

The young and old have different health concerns. Boob jobs and cosmetic surgery are medicine. Are they to be included? What about dentistry? What dental services?

Older people are more aware from simple observation that private employers are not the only source of medical care. Government already provides coverage for large numbers of poorer people through state programs - in California it was called MediCal. And, don't faint, often the self employed or careful actually buy their own insurance.

In reality there are very few people ineligible for essentially free medical care. Many simply don't seek it since they have no chronic health problem and emergency care is available w/o it.

This is not a defense of the US medical system. I have little interest or curiousity about it. But surveys such as this are useless for anything but propaganda.

Posted by K | June 27, 2007 11:55 AM

Hey, when I was in my early twenties, in the mid 70's, most of the people my age thought marijuana would be legal long before now.

The 70s was an era in which everything seemed like it was going to inevitably head on a more liberal trajectory than it ended up going to by the 80s. Increased acceptance of homosexuality in pop culture, advances in feminism, and drug legalization all seemed inevitable at that point, and then the clock turned back on those things in the 80s. It's not that people got more conservative as they got older, it's that the country became more conservative.

Posted by Tyro | June 27, 2007 12:06 PM

>(a) they don't vote as much

Which is the real problem.

Posted by judson | June 27, 2007 12:36 PM

Re: The contrast with the substantially more conservative "Generation X" cohort is, however, telling.

Huh? Where do you see that? The "all adults" category is pulled rightward (especially on social issues) by the oldest generation. On most social issues Gen X was more liberal than their parents, a very general and normal trend that has been showing up for generations.

Re: Too make sense of these data, it would be nice to see how people's views tend to change as they get older.

On social issues there is no evidence that people's political views become more conservative as they age, although their personal behavior no doubt becomes so. When did older people (who were in the generations that approved such things originally) turn against the abolition of slavery, legalized divorce, birth control, interracial marriage, or cohabitation?

Re: I'd be curious to see the results if other policy options for health care were presented (e.g. mandatory private insurance; tax credits for self-insurance; option to enroll in medicare or choose private insurance; etc.) Single payer might not do so well then.

The option to keep things as they are probably would be a lot less popular too.

Posted by JonF | June 27, 2007 12:57 PM

I'm a good liberal and I agree with liberal orthodoxy on virtually every social issue out there today.

But each successive generation manages to push the envelope. I often wonder what the hot-button social issue will be in 30 years that will cause me to grumble that the kids have finally gone too far.

Posted by Steve | June 27, 2007 1:00 PM

That may well be true Mr. Yglesias but I think it's well understood that we're dealing with a lot of young degenerates here.

One of these days Matty is gonna get sent to juvie for downloading all those Maiden and Night Ranger vids from the Youtube. You can still rock in America Matty but not in juvie.

Posted by Linus | June 27, 2007 2:00 PM

Funny lack of self-interest on the part of the young folks, then. The obvious beneficiaries of a single-payer system are those who consume a lot of healthcare (i.e. old people), while those who use less healthcare than their share (young people) are going to be losers on average. I've predicted for about ten years now that we'll see nationalized healthcare around the time that the Boomers retire, since their benefit is maximized by having such a system adopted around the time that most of them stop paying into the system.
As you might imagine I don't think too much of this proposed intergenerational transfer of wealth...

Posted by bbartlog | June 27, 2007 2:59 PM

If you guys actually read the article, you would be aware that it states that young people under 30 tend to vote liberal/Democrat anyway in the past. And Matt's point about the discrepancy of political view s between Generation X and the current generation is mentioned in the article as well. Generation X actually broke with previous generations in trending more conservative/Republican.

Posted by J | June 27, 2007 3:05 PM

"If you are young and conservative you have no heart, and if you are old and liberal you have no brain"

Some writers who have done a little digging have concluded it was probably Disraeli who said the original quote, which has since changed: "If you are young and conservative you have no heart, and if you are old and socialist you have no brain."

"One problem is that when you're a poor college student, "taxpayer-funded" can sound an awful lot like "free.""

You're ignoring the fact that college students today hear about globalization all the time. This means much less job security, in part because the older generation's "work for the same company forever like Japan" model has already broken down, outsourcing, the rise of India, China and smaller developing countries, competition in the developed world from Europe and Japan, the effect of future terrorist attacks on the economy, etc. When you suspect that you will definitely go through periods of unemployment in the future, having company-sponsored healthcare isn't exactly a comfort. In addition, my generation has been told since the mid-1990's we are going to pay really high taxes anyway. Considering how the huge budget deficit has become a point of concern even on sites like collegehumor.com, many of us are facing the fact taxes are probably going to have to go up anyway, so the idea of paying taxes is not in itself something we can wish away like older generations of supply-siders.

We should also remember that the backlash against the Great Society and the welfare state was linked to race relations. White Americans in the 1980's and 1990's tended to react more positively to the idea of welfare going to poor whites than poor blacks. Think "welfare queens." Fear of the scary black man was a key component of Reaganism's rise, such as "I support state's rights" in Philadelphia, MI, Bush Sr.'s Willie Horton ads, etc. Once Clinton reformed welfare, welfare became a much less prominent issue. There has been a secular change in crime rates as they have in general been dropping over the past few decades, thus meaning that the other main issue that dealt with white racism against blacks has fallen off the radar. All that is left is affirmative action, which has become a less talked-about issue as well. It should also be mentioned that the percentage of the population that is African-American has been either holding steady or falling, while Latinos have become the biggest minority group in America and the number of Asians has been rising rather quickly.

It should also be mentioned (partially stealing this from Chait's new book) that this is the first generation to live in the era after the change in the basic economic ideas driving Republicans. Chait notes that Nixon, Eisenhower, etc. were operating on basically the same economic principles as Democrats (think Nixon's "we are all Keynesians now"). They just differed mostly on tax levels and welfare (even back major Republicans had universal healthcare plans). The rise of supply-side economics (coupled with K Street) changed all that. Republicans have embraced a model that says de-regulation is always the answer (even when different industries say they want certain regulations, which the Bush administration refuses to support), tax cuts spur economic growth, giving more money to rich people spurs investment that create jobs (which hasn't happened) all the while giving more subsidies than ever before to agricultural conglomerates and sending new and weird subsidies to oil companies and a host of other industries. Part of these leads to shifting wealth upward from middle- and lower-class taxpayers to the wealthiest of Americans, who just happen to be the guys calling the shots for major company campaign donations.

Posted by Reality Man | June 27, 2007 4:04 PM

Gen Y sucks Gen X rules!

They never mention Gen X in the article. At one point they do write report

"The percentage of young voters who identified themselves as Republican grew steadily during the Reagan administration, and reached a high of 37 percent in 1989. That number has declined ever since, and is now at 25 percent."

Also in the very first paragraph "The poll also found that they are more likely to say the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion."

Hahahahaha! They're all liberal chickenhawks like moi!

Posted by Peter | June 27, 2007 4:10 PM

I wonder how the fact that 52% of young people think the Iraq War can end well meshes with the Republicans constant dismissal of young people's views as naive and not informed by real-world experience. Should make their heads explode.

Posted by Reality Man | June 27, 2007 4:39 PM

"I wonder how the fact that 52% of young people think the Iraq War can end well meshes with the Republicans constant dismissal of young people's views as naive and not informed by real-world experience. Should make their heads explode."

Anti-war peacenik's heads should explode. The media has been wall-to-wall bad news from Iraq. For years. Liberals have been saying it's the worst disaster in human history.

A lot of the bad news is true unfortunately. Seems like only the old timers on the National Review cruise think things are going well. Even NR editor Rich Lowry acknowledges things are going bad, which the true believers brush offed off, naturally.

And here are 52% of our nation's youth saying, yeah it will end well. There will be a "successful conclusion."

HAHAHAHAHHAHA

But maybe they recognize something older folks don't. The cold war is long gone. The U.S. is the only superpower.

Naive? Optimistic? Hopeful? Maybe.

Posted by Peter K. | June 27, 2007 5:59 PM

But maybe they recognize something older folks don't. The cold war is long gone. The U.S. is the only superpower.

Neither the end of the cold war nor the existence of the US as the only superpower in any way relate to our ability to bring Iraq to a successful conclusion. Seriously, the concepts your associating aren't connected.

Though you may be pointing out that not everyone realizes that just because you're the strongest doesn't mean you'll always be successful.

Posted by Tyro | June 27, 2007 6:30 PM

Re: The obvious beneficiaries of a single-payer system are those who consume a lot of healthcare (i.e. old people), while those who use less healthcare than their share (young people) are going to be losers on average.

In practice that has turned out not to be the case. Single payor systems in other countries tend to be very good for younger people with acute illnesses and injuries, and not so good for older people with chronic illnesses. That is, the systems tend to restrict treatment for the elderly, and to people whose illnesses are not curable, to basic maintenance care while people who can recover fully in fairly short periods of time with proper treatment are very well cared for. You will note that most people who have had personal experiences with, say, Canadian healthcare and are singing its praises begin their tales with "I broke my leg" or "I came down with appedicitis". There has been an utter lack of stories involving "My grandmother had Alzheimers in Canada" or "My brother had AIDs".

Posted by Jonf | June 27, 2007 7:31 PM

"But maybe they recognize something older folks don't. The cold war is long gone. The U.S. is the only superpower."

You know how to say that in Mandrin, smart guy?

Posted by Shawn | June 27, 2007 7:38 PM

Isn't the under 30 crowd always more progressive than the over 30 crowd?

YES, it's always been that way. The young and tenderhearted (and naive)tend to be liberal and as they age, they gain wisdom.

I mean, is this really news? It seems more like cheerleading with little new to cheer about so "let's make something out of nothing!".

Posted by Fred Jones | June 27, 2007 10:05 PM

"But maybe they recognize something older folks don't. The cold war is long gone. The U.S. is the only superpower."

You know how to say that in Mandrin, smart guy?"

Yeah China does have an enourmous amount of dirt cheap labor they can exploit. Meanwhile the U.S. is trying to keep dirt cheap labor out of the country via walls and electronic fences, etc.

I agree that China's authoritarian one-party state has done an impressive job of hitching on the Americian capitalist train. They are essentially financing our debt, making some American and corporate elites extremely wealthy in the process, but what is often forgotten is they need the American consumer to buy their stuff. If one of the two go down, they probably both go down.

It will be interesting to see if China can transition to a stable modern country. If it implodes, that will be very very ugly.

My point was that Vietnam was during the Cold War. At the time time, China and the Soviet Union were openly hostile. Now the U.S. is planning to put missile defense stations in Poland and the Czech republic.

Posted by peter k | June 28, 2007 10:04 AM