Democratic Majority Emerging After All?
Today's youth cohort might actually vote.
When I saw the headline “2024 won’t be a Trump-Biden replay. You can thank Gen Z for that.” I was wondering what Gen Z were going to do the influence the major party primaries. But the WaPo op-ed by Democratic strategist Celinda Lake and documentary filmmaker Mac Heller is about outcomes, not matchups.
It’s easy to envision the 2024 presidential election becoming the third straight contest in which a veteran Democrat goes up against Donald Trump. Once again, the Democrat wins the popular vote but swing states are tighter. Could go either way — and has, right?
But things are very different this time, and here’s why: The candidates might not be changing — but the electorate has.
Every year, about 4 million Americans turn 18 and gain the right to vote. In the eight years between the 2016 and 2024 elections, that’s 32 million new eligible voters.
Also every year, 2½ million older Americans die. So in the same eight years, that’s as many as 20 million fewer older voters.
Which means that between Trump’s election in 2016 and the 2024 election, the number of Gen Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2010s) voters will have advanced by a net 52 million against older people. That’s about 20 percent of the total 2020 eligible electorate of 258 million Americans.
We’ve been talking about this for years, right? John Judis and Ruy Teixera were predicting a new progressive era because of demographic shifts in their classic The Emerging Democratic Majority way back in 2002. The post-2012 election Republican autopsy warned of it as well. Now, granted, much of the focus was on the changing racial and ethnic demographic. But both predicted/warned that younger voters with different attitudes on all manner of issues were gradually replacing the old, white conservatives that Republicans relied on to win elections.
The hitch, it turned out, was that young folks just don’t vote in great numbers so the old folks continued to have outsized influence on elections. Lake and Heller contend that this has ceased to be the case in the Trump era.
And unlike previous generations, Gen Z votes. Comparing the four federal elections since 2015 (when the first members of Gen Z turned 18) with the preceding nine (1998 to 2014), average turnout by young voters (defined here as voters under 30) in the Trump and post-Trump years has been 25 percent higher than that of older generations at the same age before Trump — 8 percent higher in presidential years and a whopping 46 percent higher in midterms.
Similarly, though not as drastic, we have seen a 7 percent increase in voter registration among under-30 voters since Gen Z joined the electorate. In midterm elections, under-30s have seen a 20 percent increase in their share of the electorate, on average, since Trump and Gen Z entered the game.
They include handy-dandy graphics showing this; I’ll not reproduce them here.
The obvious reason for this, it seems to me, is that the 2016 and 2020 elections were simply higher stakes than the 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012 elections for young folks. In all those elections, relatively moderate Republicans won their party nomination. And, while Obama was certainly more progressive than Gore or Kerry, only in 2008 was he an exciting prospect for young voters. Sure, the Iraq War was a factor in 2004 and 2008. But, unlike the Vietnam era, there’s no draft. Trump was seen as an existential threat in a way that few saw Bush, McCain, or Romney.
But Lake and Heller have a different take:
Trump is not the deciding factor for these voters. When pollsters ask why, Gen Z voters say their motivation is not a party or candidate. It is, instead, strong passion on one or more issues — a much more policy-driven approach than the more partisan voting behavior of their elders.
That policy-first approach, combined with the issues they care most about, have led young people in recent years to vote more frequently for Democrats and progressive policies than prior generations did when of similar age — as recent elections in Kansas, Michigan and Wisconsin have shown.
In last August’s Kansas abortion referendum, for example, women under 30 turned out at a rate of 41 percent and helped win the contest. A similar Michigan abortion referendum brought youth midterm turnout to 49 percent — and 69 percent of voters younger than 30 voted to put abortion rights protections in the state constitution compared with just 52 percent of voters 30 and older. Michigan voters elected Democratic majorities in both state houses for the first time in years, and reelected their Democratic governor, attorney general and secretary of state.
I’m skeptical of the HIT survey findings. Not shockingly, the young folks are dissatisfied with both parties and claim to be Independents. But the “issues” and “policy-driven approach” bit is wishful thinking. It’s mostly pocketbook stuff.
Their issue priorities:
Their policy agenda:
This is mostly “give me free stuff” with some environmental policy and social justice thrown in. (And this is just Democrats; they don’t have a similar chart for those who identify as Republican.)
Regardless, the choice between Trump or a Trump-like Republican and Biden or any plausible 2024 substitute is likely to be more stark than any non-Trump election since Vietnam. And, absent a radical transformation of the Republican Party, this strikes me as unassailable:
While American voters historically have tended somewhat to become more conservative as they age, no one should expect these voting patterns to change drastically. About 48 percent of Gen Z voters identify as a person of color, while the boomers they’re replacing in the electorate are 72 percent White. Gen Z voters are on track to be the most educated group in our history, and the majority of college graduates are now female. Because voting participation correlates positively with education, expect women to speak with a bigger voice in our coming elections. Gen Z voters are much more likely to cite gender fluidity as a value, and they list racism among their greatest concerns. Further, they are the least religious generation in our history. No wonder there’s discussion in some parts of the GOP about raising the voting age to 25, and among some Democrats about lowering it to 16!
This, though, seems to be a simple shoehorning of the pundits’ policy preferences into an otherwise valid argument:
There are lessons — and warnings — here for both parties. For Republicans, the message is obvious: Listen to the voices of this soon-to-be-dominant group of voters as you formulate your policies on climate, abortion, guns, health care, inclusion and everything else. Unlike some older voters, they are listening to what you say — and to how you say it. Change your language and style from the unmitigated male id of “Never Back Down” and “Where Woke Goes to Die” to words of community, stewardship, sharing and collaboration. That’s the new patriotism, and young voters believe that approach will solve problems more effectively than what they’ve seen over the past two decades.
While I agree with the larger point—which I’ve been making since even before the aforementioned “autopsy”—that the GOP needs to moderate and figure out how to appeal to non-white citizens, the notion that it should move to the left of the current Democratic Party is wishful thinking. It simply needs to be a modern conservative party rather than a far-right, white nationalist party.
There are stark messages for Democrats, too. Meet young voters where they are: on social media, not cable news. Make your messages short, funny and somehow sarcastic yet authentic and earnest at the same time. Your focus should be issues first, issues second, candidates third and party identity never.
I’m not sure TikTok is a particularly viable political medium—especially if themessaging is supposed to be about issues. And, frankly, I’m not sure any major party candidate has emphasized “party identity” in my memory.
A final word of warning: Both parties should worry about young voters embracing third-party candidates. Past elections show that Gen Z voters shop for candidates longer and respond favorably to new faces and issue-oriented candidates. They like combining their activism with their voting and don’t feel bound by party loyalty. And they can’t remember Ross Perot, Ralph Nader — or even Jill Stein.
I mean . . . okay. But I don’t know what anyone is supposed to do about that. Campaigns for President are inherently national—even moreso in the modern era. One can’t promise the moon to the under-25s while ignoring how the over-45s are going to react.
We suspect both campaigns know most or all of what we have written here. Habit might prevent them from acting on it, but they have these numbers. In one of life’s great ironies, the group that doesn’t know it is young voters. They think of themselves as ignored, powerless and marginalized in favor of big money and shouting boomers. But over the next year, they’ll figure it out. Gen Z will tire of waiting for Washington to unite to solve problems, will grab the national microphone and will decide the 2024 presidential race.
I doubt that very much. Indeed, if they decide to vote en masse for third-party candidates, they’ll mitigate their influence considerably.
My first thought when I read this was that Republicans do this constantly. It’s just in a negative fashion. Isn’t that what all the harping about RINOs is? It’s enforcing party identity by attempting to dissuade other Republicans from going outside of that identity.
This seems to disregard a few realities. Such as Millennials. They are now more numerous than Boomers (since 2019). And will dominate numerically for at least 20 years or so as they physically outnumber Gen Z. They are 27-42 this year, i.e., throwing off the immaturity of youth for the adulthood of thinking what is best for their kids. The moms showing up at school board meetings are likely more Millennials than even Gen X. And those moms were conditioned to activism by their college days. Now they have a cause that’s close to home.
As far as Boomers, well, those leftists of the late ’60s to mid ’70s are dying off along with the rest. Anyone seen Code Pink in recent years? On the other hand, those of us who saw Reagan save the country, even if we foolishly voted for Carter in 1980, we are just in the retirement prime.
And so far, Democrats are putting up a pre-Boomer, with a mid-Boomer name brand challenger. While on the other side, Vivek Ramasamy is a Millennial, is talking policy and is not a white guy. Maybe these Gen Z will show up in the primaries? Even the heir apparent for when Biden falters, Newsom is a barely not a Boomer white guy.
The start and end: all named Generation “analysis” is statistical rubbish and never more than the pundit doing motivated reasoning.
Unless one is presenting normalised age cohorts (not named generations, an American marketing thing, not a coherent mode of analysis) and controlling for change over time as some recent articles have done (and of course critically are decomposing for the critical and signifcant internal geographical variations which are the real voting units) it is purely GIGO.
This utterly aside from the conclusions, favourable or non-favourable to any of the parties.
While the overall point being made in this article is important, it may be a mistake to use 2016 as the baseline. Trump won a lot more votes in 2020 than in 2016. Biden just increased his vote share relative to Hillary’s by an even greater amount, and he did it in the right places, just enough to eke out his decisive (if narrow) EC victory. The overall voter engagement was much greater than in 2016, making it more representative of the public. That doesn’t automatically mean “it can only get worse for Republicans from here”–there are several factors that will still affect the outcome in 2024, including the unity of Biden’s coalition, or the fact that he’s the incumbent rather than challenger this time–but 2020 remains still a better measure of the Republican and Democratic electorates in their purest forms than 2016 did.
This is the great hope. This generation is being called on to save the nation. Not from the Nazis or the Communists or the terrorists, but from the Republican Party. The call is coming from inside the house.
If they show up they can take control. They have the numbers. If if if.
I really don’t like having hope, it distorts judgment and of course. . . I was about to say it makes you vulnerable, but that’s not really true. The absence of hope makes you vulnerable, makes you helpless. I used to believe more in the cold comforts of cynicism – a cynic tends to be right a lot of the time, and I do like being right. But the point of politics, my lifelong obsession, is to build a better world, and for that you have to invest some hope.
I know as an old fart – 69 next week – I should bemoan the yutes, and god knows I think they are incapable of crafting a message or of political self-discipline or of proportionality, and they are no fun, but they’re good humans. Better than my generation was or is. The sooner they shove us off the stage, the better.
I’m sick of Boomer neuroses, sick of us, our crass materialism, our assumption that greed should be the primary human motivator, our quick resort to violence, and not just our ignorance but our insistence on the rightness of our ignorance. I’m not Pollyanna, I recognize that Gen Z will bring its own bullshit, and I’m not looking forward to a political media environment that may be defined by their prickly humorlessness, but it looks to me like the Millennials are an incremental improvement on Boomers, and Gen Z an improvement on them.
Asking for prescription drugs to be priced reasonably is not asking for free stuff. It’s asking for a spike to be slammed in the heart of the ‘free market’, which is different. What’s annoying is that all of these people speak in the hobby-language of political insiders c 2007, where asking for affordable housing, education, and health care is like asking for the government to pay for rave trips to Mexico City, plus good Molly. This language barely makes sense to anybody now. That’s why there will be no normal conservative party, and every centrist is half in the crazy bag. Frowning normally in an uptight manner at everything you don’t understand no longer works. You need to feel extremely violated by the same to get that the equivalent jolt of superiority.
@JKB:
I watched his TPUSA speech the other day, and if there was “policy,” I must have missed it–he was mostly just blabbing about wokeness. To the extent that he has any policy proposals, a lot of it is stuff that would require a constitutional amendment, which is not only unlikely to happen, it isn’t even something the president has any direct hand in. That is not the marker of a serious candidacy. But maybe I’m focusing too much on the content of his character.
@JKB:
Now that is funny.
Trickle down economics? Are you kidding me?
Reagan started the war on the middle class that MAGA continues with enthusiasm today.
Reagan is as responsible for the decay of America as anyone.
You MAGAts are hilarious.
All I know is young people came out to vote for Biden, and especially young women stopped the so-called red wave from happening in the Mid-Term.
Climate change, women’s rights, LGTBQ rights, gun control, even Democracy itself…these things matter to young people and they are going to…hell, have voted for them.
MAGA is diametrically opposed to all of these things.
Do the math.
@Daryl:
If you saw Reagan ‘save’ this country, you are at least 55 or so. But god bless you have some theories about Gen Z voters and how they will like the tech guy who talks about wokeness, which you hate too.
@Michael Reynolds:
GRAY PRIDE
We’re Old, We’re Tired.
Get Off Our Lawn!
I have to admit my reaction was, “Who cares?”. The Democratic Party of today is not the Democratic Party of my youth. In fact, in the South at least, they are the exact opposite. The Republican Party of today is not the Republican Party of my young adulthood. In fact, in the North at least, they are the exact opposite. And by the time this or that long heralded takeover by the Dems (or before that, by the Repubs), neither party will be what they are today. What matters is which policies and values triumph and which fall on the ash heap of history, not what party label gets more votes.
If we accept the premise that younger voters are skewing more Dem (provable) and aren’t likely to become more conservative as they age (I believe the pundits are wrong about becoming more conservative), the reason is that R’s have abandoned any policy/program ideas that address pertinent issues that younger voters feel is important. The only political party doing so are the Dems, so if you care about an issue, your only choice as a voter, is to vote Dem.
If R’s return to having policy/program ideas that address issues, rather than simple denial, you will see some of today’s younger voters shift their voting to either a revised R party or a new conservative party.
I’m skeptical of the “emerging majority” theories as a general rule. The assumption seems to be that the parties will stay the same and new cohorts of voters will come to one party or another via demographic or some other change.
But the problem is that parties are not static, and the future political priorities of major cohorts are not predictable. And, especially recently, there’s been a major realignment. For example, “The Emerging Democratic Majority” was premised on Democrats keeping the white working class, which they decidedly have not. Had they kept that cohort, then Democrats would be running the table. In the other direction, educated people, particularly the upper class, have shifted from the GoP to the Democrats.
@Michael Reynolds:
Lol at what’s become a meme – skipping Gen X entirely.
@Michael Reynolds:
And Gen X, as usual, just gets forgotten.
Don’t worry, we’re used to it. We’re the last generation that got told “when the streetlights come on, make your way home. You certainly have a key.”
The hidden assumption with all of the demographic change ideas is that current American politics is so awful and rooted in prejudice that once enough people start dying it will change simply because why would it go on? The idea that Gen Z-style politics will end up blind to climate change and inequality while ranting about the nuances of racism in Thomas Jefferson is too absurd to be possible. But it very well might happen.
The Emerging Democratic Majority was a dumb book misinterpreted at a time when climate change was being denied, no WMDs were found, gay marriage was a terrorist threat, and George Bush was reelected by people who believed that Saddam was behind 9/11. Everyone thought no way the country can be this dumb and awful in around 20 years, and yet here we are.
How seriously should we take these prognistications? Here’s something from 8 years ago that might add perspective:
The total youth vote doesn’t matter as much as where they live. Young people who are more likely to vote against GOP issues move out of those areas. So I think votes continue to be close in the toss up states and get further apart in the definitely red and blue ones.
Steve
@MarkedMan: Morrissey may have a point about the generational majority part. It’ll take at least a generation to dismantle the damage from Trump and the GQP.
@MarkedMan:
The historical analogue for generations-long control of the House is the 40-year period of Dem control from 1954-1994 (which more broadly could be viewed as a more than 60-year-period that began in 1930 and was broken up only briefly a couple of times in the 1940s and early 1950s). The problem is that this majority was much less ideologically cohesive than today’s party. The Dems included many conservatives, particularly in the South. Reagan never had a Republican majority in the House, but he did have a functional conservative one for his first two years.
The parties becoming defined more on ideological lines makes the coalitions much less stable and long-lasting.
@Andy: @Mikey:
Hey, if they wanted to be remembered they should have come up with something better than a generic X. Marketing! Does no one do market research anymore?
Going forward we should work on these generation names. I favor animal totems. Generation Frog. Generation Cow. Generation Bedbug. A system that can cover a long sweep of years. You can’t sell much merch off ‘millennial’ yawn or even Gen Z since the Russians appropriated that letter. But Generation Leopard? Generation Hawk? I’m seeing t-shirts and mugs. Action figures kids could play with, having them battle over generational wealth and pronouns and whatnot. It’s a work-in-progress, I haven’t ironed out all the kinks.
@Michael Reynolds:
That’s a completely different market. 😀
The premise that the youth will save us a few years down the line has been around my entire life, and we haven’t been saved yet.
I’m sure they’re better than Boomers, but who isn’t?
I am, however, slightly impressed by Generation X’s ability to become even more irrelevant than our low numbers would indicate by voting 50-50.
@Gustopher:
I would argue that they did save us from a second Trump term, so far.
@Gustopher:
Indeed! As I sometimes remind students at high school–We failed. Spectacularly.
I wouldn’t discount TikTok as a Gen Z GOTV medium. My recently turned 18 year old is pretty fired up to vote, and it’s because of the stuff she’s seeing on TikTok. She’s never cared about politics before Dobbs, now everything is pissing her off. Mostly Republican shenanigans, but there’s been some environmental issues she’s recently developed opinions on, as well. And don’t even get her started on the school shootings. These kids are fucking TIRED of schools getting shot up, and nobody doing anything about it.
If you offered that summary of this content in my class, you would get a C minus.
#10 is a request for free stuff; I’ll give you that one. #1 is a request for regulation of an industry that is gouging. #5 and #11 are proposals for infrastructure investment. #17 is last on the list.
…and for anyone young, or with children, climate change is not “some environmental policy” — it is literally a matter of life and death, if not this generation then the next or the one after that.
@Daryl:
I frequent a record store that is staffed by three guys in their early-mid 20s. They ALL live with their parents – it’s understandable because every cent they make working full-time would not get them a one-bedroom apartment.
When I was 19, my brother and I shared a nice apartment. I bought new furniture, had a decent car, some money in the bank, walking around $$$, and no debt. This was accomplished by busting my tail 4-5 nights a week in a restaurant. All I had to do was work hard.
Kids today are paying a steep price indeed for Reagan’s policies and their aftermath.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
The best way I have ever heard this put is “Boomers relived their parent’s lives with a frequent flyer upgrade”
Oh and let’s not forget the public service announcement that applied only to us Gen X kids:
“It’s 10:00 PM, do you know where your children are?”
@ James
So young people wanting not to be gouged for prescription drugs, which after all, are a need, not a want, is some sort of selfish act.
But Clarence Thomas taking hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of uber, uber luxury travel is… what exactly?
I guess the aristocrats are entitled to whatever largess may flow their way. The serfs, not so much.
@JKB: “While on the other side, Vivek Ramasamy is a Millennial, is talking policy and is not a white guy. ”
Perhaps you mean ‘at the very bottom of the other side’ and ‘talking insane techbro idiocy’.
@Barry:
An opinion, but my point was more the Republican field has the much heralded diversity. They have several, young, non-white candidates running.
I thought Gen Z was all about the diversity. Instead their Democrat option is a pre-Boomer, old white guy who gets handsy with young girls/women. What will Democrats do if all these young, college graduate Gen Zers ever stop and think?
@JKB:
The 2020 Democratic field included 6 women and 7 people of color (two of whom were women) as well as one openly gay man.
The 2024 Republican field so far includes 6 POC, one of whom is a woman, though no other women in the field. That’s a step in the right direction when it comes to diversity, but it’s still behind the Dems.
Yes, Biden is an old white guy, but so is Trump, who’s overwhelmingly likely to be the nominee.
@JKB: “I thought Gen Z was all about the diversity. Instead their Democrat option is a pre-Boomer, old white guy who gets handsy with young girls/women. What will Democrats do if all these young, college graduate Gen Zers ever stop and think?”
What part of ‘incumbent’ do you not understand?
As with others, I’m skeptical of “Named Generation” analyses, and yeah, I’m old enough to remember studies predicting that the Pepsi Generation would sweep McGovern into office.
Also, the definition of our political orientations, liberal and conservative have continued to evolve and shift over years. Broadly speaking, the liberals have grown slightly less enamored of New Deal style economics, while growing steadily more tolerant of new social norms. Conservatives have become incoherent on economics, because social and ethnic grievance has eclipsed every other concern.
Which is a warning for us liberals. While most young people are socially liberal, the wellspring of reactionary authoritarianism is misogyny. There is a direct path from wounded male ego through the Andrew Tate reactionary, to the Trumpist brownshirted Proud Boys.
And there will never be a generation without some percentage of wounded males looking for some way to lash out at those they believe have wronged them.
Will incumbent be enough to overcome pre-boomer, white guy?
On what basis will Gen-Z maintain their devotion to diversity if they support the older than their grandparents white guy, who “worked” with actual segregationists when he was a young senator in the post-civil rights act 1960s?
@Jax: Same. My hairdresser was anti politics when I first started going to her but now she tells me about things on TikTok she saw and asks if I have heard about them (Ohio has a pretty bad special election going on right now and THERE ARE TIKTOKS explaining it and why it’s bad!). So she’s now a No vote on Issue 1 and it’s probably 95% because of TikTok.
@DrDaveT:I know! Four of the top six aren’t free stuff in any sense of the word. Forgiving college loans – tenth. Not first. First is prescription drugs, which arguably will benefit other generations more. It’s a very dismissive take.
@JKB:
On the basis that his actions and policies actually promote diversity?
I can explain this in simpler language if it will help you. Let me know..