Harvard IOP Spring 2016 Poll

[Dan '82]

Somehow I missed this when it came out last week.


http://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/harvar...-2016-poll

Quote:A new national poll of America’s 18- to 29-year-olds by Harvard’s Institute of Politics (IOP), located at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, finds Hillary Clinton the clear front-runner over Donald Trump to win the White House in 2016. Among likely voters, Clinton has 61% of young voters and Trump 25%, with 14% of likely young voters unsure.
The IOP’s newest poll results – its 29th major release since 2000 – also shows that a majority of America’s 18- to 29-year-olds rejects both socialist and capitalist labels. 42% of young Americans support capitalism, and 33% say they support socialism. A detailed report on the poll’s findings is available online at http://bit.ly/IOPSpring16Poll.
“Millennials care deeply about their futures and in this election cycle they are laser-focused on issues like access to educational opportunity, women’s equality and the economy,” said Harvard Institute of Politics Director Maggie Williams. “This survey reflects their passion, their worries and most importantly, a growing awareness that their voices have power.”
“Young Americans are sending a strong message. They care deeply about the future, but are concerned that the current state of our institutions and our politics are not sufficient to meet our nation’s challenges,” said Harvard Institute of Politics Polling Director John Della Volpe. “We hope that in the remaining months of the campaign, candidates from both parties work to rebuild the trust that’s been eroded and inspire Millennials to not only vote, but engage in civic life.”

http://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/harvar...-2016-poll

[Mikebert]

This shows how history creates political generations.  Political beliefs are most strongly shaped between the ages of 14 and 24.  The 18-29 year old cohorts were born over 1987-1998.  They began developing their political beliefs in 2001 and so have been shaped by the experience of the Bush II and Obama generations.  The oldest them may have childhood memories of Clinton. Their own experience plus those of friends a few years older would see Bush II as inheriting a prosperous nation at peace from Clinton and leaving a nation at war with a collapsing economy to Obama.  Under Obama the economy did not get worse than what he inherited; far fewer troops are fighting overseas and US casualties are correspondingly less.  Obama's foreign policy blunders resulted in far smaller loses of American lives and treasure than did Bush's blunders.

And 2016 Republicans essentially offer the same sort of policies as Bush did.  Trumps calls for the US to do less overseas, so did Bush.  Trump calls for tax cuts, so did Bush.  Trump is anti-trade and wants to impose tariffs.  Bush actually did impose tariffs on steel.  Trump does not want to cut entitlements, neither did Bush, he actually expanded them. 

In this year Republican voters were given a choice of Bush II and Bush II on steroids.  They picked the less extreme version of Bush.  But if you prefer Obama to Bush (as most younger Americans do) then they are going to prefer Clinton to Trump.

GenXers are going to be different.  Their political experiences when coming of age saw Carter (failure) Reagan+Bush (success), Cliinton (mixed bag).  The first wavers will see Republicans as better than Democrats.  The later wave will be more in the middle.  Late wave Boomers will have seen Nixon, Ford and Carter, and Reagan, and will see Republican failure, Democratic failure and Republican success.  The balance is tipped in favor of Republicans.  And so it goes working back. 

The paper I linked to shows this in a more rigorous fashion, but its the same idea.