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Daniel McGraw writes that based on their demographic characteristics the Democratic and Republican parties face two very different futures. There’s been much written about how millennials are becoming a reliable voting bloc for Democrats, but there’s been much less attention paid to one of the biggest get-out-the-vote challenges for the Republican Party heading into the next presidential election: The Republican Party voter is old—and getting older and far more Republicans than Democrats have died since the 2012 elections. By combining presidential election exit polls with mortality rates per age group from the U.S. Census Bureau, McGraw calculated that, of the 61 million who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, about 2.75 million will be dead by the 2016 election. About 2.3 million of President Barack Obama’s voters have died too but that leaves a big gap in between, a difference of roughly 453,000 in favor of the Democrats. “I’ve never seen anyone doing any studies on how many dead people can’t vote,” laughs William Frey, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in demographic studies. “I’ve seen studies on how many dead people do vote. The old Daley Administration in Chicago was very good at that.”
Frey points out that, since Republicans are getting whiter and older, replacing the voters that leave this earth with young ones is essential for them to be competitive in presidential elections. "Millennials (born 1981 to 1997) now are larger in numbers than baby boomers ([born] 1946 to 1964), and how they vote will make the big difference. And the data says that if Republicans focus on economic issues and stay away from social ones like gay marriage, they can make serious inroads with millennials.” Exit polling indicates that millennials have split about 65-35 in favor of the Dems in the past two elections. If that split holds true in 2016, Democrats will have picked up a two million vote advantage among first-time voters. These numbers combined with the voter death data puts Republicans at an almost 2.5 million voter disadvantage going into 2016.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Wednesday May 20 2015, @05:43PM
Pundits, pollsters, and media bottom-feeders have been chasing their tails over this for years. The current establishment-oriented political science paradigm is, I believe, completely off the mark and doing millenials a huge disservice.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that younger voters, particularly those who actually pay attention and think for themselves, may be the first ripple of a sea-change. The very cynicism, confusion, and hopelessness the establishment bemoans may very well be the breeding ground of a complete rejection of the old guard and their Wall Street masters. The younger coworkers I've talked to mostly feel hoodwinked by Obama, are starting to see the Hilldebeast for the Romney-in-a-skirt she is, and are lining up for Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren. They tend to see Rand Paul as just more Wall Street plutocracy/Washington business-as-usual bullshit with a few liberal social values thrown in. Honest, practical populism is the closest I can come to a descriptor for their thinking. Not Utopian Marxism, just "cut the bullshit, play fair, and get on with it".
My generation fucked up when our zeal for Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy got twisted into a nomination for George "the doofus" McGovern, and all we got in the end was Nixon. There actually were a lot more young conservatives back then, public bible-thumping was not yet considered ridiculous fringe antics, and the reactionary WW2 generation wasn't dying off yet.
Millenials and disaffected X-ers just might fix what us old hippies were too stoned to get right the last time this chance came around.