What Bush Hath Wrought

Tuesday, 29th April 2008

Via Marc Ambinder, this graph is not, shall we say, good news for the Republican party's long-term prospects.

Sure, some of these young voters will likely drift to the right in years to come, but most people tend to fix their party identification early and hold on to it doggedly. And of course young voters today aren't spooked by the legacy of the 1970s the way their parents' generation is. Equally, to the extent (possibly exaggerated) that Iraq will have a lasting, quasi-seismic impact on American politics it seems, right now, likely to damage the Republican party more than the Democrats. That said, I suspect that it's the GOP's domestic failures that will prove just as telling in the medium to long term. Which is another way of saying that I'm very much looking forward to reading Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam's new book, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.

Filed under: Americana (232 more articles) , Bush (38 more articles) , GOP (140 more articles)

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Igor

April 29th, 2008 2:59pm Report this comment

If you count the number of people that pick a party, it did not increased. On contrary. 7%-9% of the young Americans refuse to make a choice between Dems or Reps.

Nick

April 29th, 2008 7:44pm Report this comment

It's true that Party ID fixes early, and people are extremely unlikely to change over the course of their lives. What seems to be missing is a comparable chart for the period, say, 30 years ago or so; Party ID also fixes strongly to parents' Party ID (more strongly than anything else, as I remember my political behavior). The period 1974-1978 would, I'd guess, have a similar Republican-Democratic split.

RW Rogers

April 30th, 2008 1:56am Report this comment

Nick makes a good point. I came of age in the '70's and, after looking at that chart, I began to wonder about my memory of a heavy Democratic tilt in my age group. Fortunately, access to the information is easy these days. The Washington Post has the details of exit poll results for each presidential election since 1972 here. 1972: 47%D 26%R 28%Independent 1976: 40%D 20%R 40%Independent 1980: 44%D 27%R 29%Independent 1984: 37%D 37%R 27%Independent 1988: 38%D 38%R 24%Independent Their numbers for the years covered by the graph above are substantially different, with a far greater percentage of self-described independents. It seems to me that actual voters should be of much more enduring interest than potential voters given the generally dismal turnout. The GOP could be in for some rough times, but a single presidency could change it around for them (as Reagan's did). They are no more likely to collapse than the Conservative Party in Britain did during the long Labour reign. I do recall a number of premature reports of its pending demise, however, when last I checked, it wasn't the LibDems with the 18-point margin in the most recent poll ;-)

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