TER
07-17-2014, 12:18 PM
not sure if posted yet... coming from the NYT...
The Coming Democratic Schism
JULY 15, 2014
http://static01.********/images/2013/10/04/opinion/edsall-contributor/edsall-contributor-thumbLarge-v2.jpg (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/contributors/thomasbedsall/index.html)
Thomas B. Edsall (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/contributors/thomasbedsall/index.html)
There is a striking generational split in the Democratic electorate.
This deepening division is apparent in a June Pew Research Center survey (http://www.people-press.org/files/2014/06/6-26-14-Political-Typology-release1.pdf) of more than 10,000 people, “Beyond Red vs. Blue.” The Pew survey points up the emergence of a cohort of younger voters who are loyal to the Democratic Party, but much less focused on economic redistribution than on issues of personal and sexual autonomy.
Back in April, Pew researchers (http://www.pewresearch.org/packages/the-next-america/) wrote that “huge generation gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious affiliation, and our technology use.” These trends, Pew noted, point “toward a future marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a century.”
I asked Andrew Kohut, the founding director of the Pew Center, what he made of these results. He emailed me his thoughts: “There is a libertarian streak that is apparent among these left-of-center young people. Socially liberal but very wary of government. Why? They came of age in an anti-government era when government doesn’t work. They are very liberal on interpersonal racial dimension, but reject classic liberal notions about ways of achieving social progress for minorities.”
One reflection of the confused state of generational politics today is that an earlier Pew poll, which I wrote about (http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/is-rush-limbaughs-country-gone/) during the last presidential election, revealed that younger voters were less hostile to socialism than their elders.
Two other studies document the broad trends that the most recent Pew survey identified. A research paper (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2404046), “Generational Difference in Perception of Tax Equity and Attitudes Towards Compliance,” by three professors of accounting — Susan Jurney, Tim Rupert and Martha Wartick — found that “the Millennial generation was less likely to recommend progressive taxation” than older generations.
In addition, a July 10 YouGov poll (http://reason.com/assets/db/2014-millennials-report.pdf) of young adults (ages 18 to 29), sponsored by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian research organization (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/business/how-broccoli-became-a-symbol-in-the-health-care-debate.html) — “Millennials: The Politically Unclaimed Generation” — did not directly compare younger and older voters but does shed light on the views of younger voters generally. “Social and cultural issues are currently more central to millennials’ political judgments than economic policy,” the report says. “When asked to explain the reasons for their ideological identifications, social and cultural concerns largely defined their labels.”
Returning to the Pew data, even though younger Democrats are less committed to the central tenets of traditional economic liberalism, there is a strong body of evidence suggesting that the partisan commitment these voters made to the Democratic Party when they first came of political age will endure.
A paper (http://www.stat.columbia.edu/%7Egelman/research/unpublished/cohort_voting_20140605.pdf) published last month, “The Great Society, Reagan’s Revolution, and Generations of Presidential Voting” by Yair Ghitza, a doctoral candidate at Columbia, and Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science there, found that the “political events of a voter’s teenage and early adult years, centered around the age of 18, are enormously important in the formation of these long-term partisan preferences.”
My Times colleagues at The Upshot have produced an interactive graphic (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/08/upshot/how-the-year-you-were-born-influences-your-politics.html?rref=upshot&_r=0) to demonstrate the lasting power of the partisan loyalties that men and women establish in their late teens and early 20s.
Although a majority of younger voters today are reliably Democratic, there are key issues on which they differ notably from their elders within the center-left coalition. The July Pew survey identifies two predominantly white core Democratic constituencies: the “solid liberals” of the traditional left, which is 69 percent white, with an average age of 46, who exhibit deep progressive commitments on both economic and social issues; and younger voters, 68 percent white, with an average age of 38 (http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/typology-detailed-tables/), which Pew calls the “next generation left.”
The two groups were asked to choose whether “most people can get ahead if they’re willing to work hard” or whether “hard work and determination are no guarantee of success for most people.” A decisive majority of the older “solid liberal” group, 67 percent, responded that hard work is no guarantee of success, while an even larger majority, 77 percent, of the younger “next generation left” believes that you can get ahead if you are willing to work hard.
According to Pew, the older group believes, 73-20, that “government should do more to solve problems.” Only 44 percent of the younger group agrees — and of younger respondents, 50 percent believe that “government is trying to do too much.”
read rest here (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/opinion/thomas-edsall-a-shift-in-young-democrats-values.html)
The Coming Democratic Schism
JULY 15, 2014
http://static01.********/images/2013/10/04/opinion/edsall-contributor/edsall-contributor-thumbLarge-v2.jpg (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/contributors/thomasbedsall/index.html)
Thomas B. Edsall (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/contributors/thomasbedsall/index.html)
There is a striking generational split in the Democratic electorate.
This deepening division is apparent in a June Pew Research Center survey (http://www.people-press.org/files/2014/06/6-26-14-Political-Typology-release1.pdf) of more than 10,000 people, “Beyond Red vs. Blue.” The Pew survey points up the emergence of a cohort of younger voters who are loyal to the Democratic Party, but much less focused on economic redistribution than on issues of personal and sexual autonomy.
Back in April, Pew researchers (http://www.pewresearch.org/packages/the-next-america/) wrote that “huge generation gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious affiliation, and our technology use.” These trends, Pew noted, point “toward a future marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a century.”
I asked Andrew Kohut, the founding director of the Pew Center, what he made of these results. He emailed me his thoughts: “There is a libertarian streak that is apparent among these left-of-center young people. Socially liberal but very wary of government. Why? They came of age in an anti-government era when government doesn’t work. They are very liberal on interpersonal racial dimension, but reject classic liberal notions about ways of achieving social progress for minorities.”
One reflection of the confused state of generational politics today is that an earlier Pew poll, which I wrote about (http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/is-rush-limbaughs-country-gone/) during the last presidential election, revealed that younger voters were less hostile to socialism than their elders.
Two other studies document the broad trends that the most recent Pew survey identified. A research paper (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2404046), “Generational Difference in Perception of Tax Equity and Attitudes Towards Compliance,” by three professors of accounting — Susan Jurney, Tim Rupert and Martha Wartick — found that “the Millennial generation was less likely to recommend progressive taxation” than older generations.
In addition, a July 10 YouGov poll (http://reason.com/assets/db/2014-millennials-report.pdf) of young adults (ages 18 to 29), sponsored by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian research organization (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/business/how-broccoli-became-a-symbol-in-the-health-care-debate.html) — “Millennials: The Politically Unclaimed Generation” — did not directly compare younger and older voters but does shed light on the views of younger voters generally. “Social and cultural issues are currently more central to millennials’ political judgments than economic policy,” the report says. “When asked to explain the reasons for their ideological identifications, social and cultural concerns largely defined their labels.”
Returning to the Pew data, even though younger Democrats are less committed to the central tenets of traditional economic liberalism, there is a strong body of evidence suggesting that the partisan commitment these voters made to the Democratic Party when they first came of political age will endure.
A paper (http://www.stat.columbia.edu/%7Egelman/research/unpublished/cohort_voting_20140605.pdf) published last month, “The Great Society, Reagan’s Revolution, and Generations of Presidential Voting” by Yair Ghitza, a doctoral candidate at Columbia, and Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science there, found that the “political events of a voter’s teenage and early adult years, centered around the age of 18, are enormously important in the formation of these long-term partisan preferences.”
My Times colleagues at The Upshot have produced an interactive graphic (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/08/upshot/how-the-year-you-were-born-influences-your-politics.html?rref=upshot&_r=0) to demonstrate the lasting power of the partisan loyalties that men and women establish in their late teens and early 20s.
Although a majority of younger voters today are reliably Democratic, there are key issues on which they differ notably from their elders within the center-left coalition. The July Pew survey identifies two predominantly white core Democratic constituencies: the “solid liberals” of the traditional left, which is 69 percent white, with an average age of 46, who exhibit deep progressive commitments on both economic and social issues; and younger voters, 68 percent white, with an average age of 38 (http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/typology-detailed-tables/), which Pew calls the “next generation left.”
The two groups were asked to choose whether “most people can get ahead if they’re willing to work hard” or whether “hard work and determination are no guarantee of success for most people.” A decisive majority of the older “solid liberal” group, 67 percent, responded that hard work is no guarantee of success, while an even larger majority, 77 percent, of the younger “next generation left” believes that you can get ahead if you are willing to work hard.
According to Pew, the older group believes, 73-20, that “government should do more to solve problems.” Only 44 percent of the younger group agrees — and of younger respondents, 50 percent believe that “government is trying to do too much.”
read rest here (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/opinion/thomas-edsall-a-shift-in-young-democrats-values.html)