Kids, Parents, and Political Realignment

As is my wont, I spent some time with my students after the election worrying over the exit polls (ignoring the wisecracks from all the happy Apple customers about how my laptop was made by a company that is now defunct). Especially when you compare polls from different years, you can make all sorts of interesting observations.
 
Consider, for example, this one: In 2004, young people (ages 18 – 29) were 17% of the electorate and went 54 – 45 for John Kerry. In 2008, they were 18% of the electorate and went 66 – 32 for Barack Obama. That means that roughly 9.2% of all the 2004 voters were young people voting for Kerry, while in 2008 11.9% of all voters were young Obama supporters. In a closely divided country (remember that George W. Bush beat John Kerry 51 – 48), that kind of change is huge — enough, indeed, to be a game-changer.
 
Obama makes similar gains over Kerry among African-American voters, going from 88% of 11% of the electorate to 95% of 13%. Thus in 2004, 9.7% of all voters were African-American Kerry supporters, while in 2008, 12.4% were African-American Obama supporters. Another game-changer, in other words.
 
But if you look more closely at these constituencies, something even more interesting emerges. While they still went for Obama 54 – 44, young whites were significantly less supportive of him than were young African-Americans (95 – 4) and young Latinos (76 – 19). More than 40% of Obama’s young supporters were African-American or Latino, half again as large as their share of the electorate as a whole. While the 2004 exit poll crosstabs don’t provide similar data, I think that it’s fair to argue that a significant portion of the surge in youth to the Democratic side comes from this source.
 
As we were looking at the data, a student almost started out of her seat and asked the following question: “What happens when you turn 30?” Her puzzlement was prompted by the stark contrast between the preferences of white 18 – 29 year olds and those 30 – 44. As I just noted, the former went for Obama 55 – 44; the latter preferred McCain even more pronouncedly (57 – 41). Although the data isn’t sorted by race, the same phenomenon was evident in 2004: those 30 – 44 were 8% more likely than their younger brethren to prefer Bush to Kerry (53 – 44, as opposed to 45 – 54).
 
There are a number of explanations for this. I’ll begin with the one that’s least comforting for geezers like me: there’s a generational difference between twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings. Someone in his or her late thirties could, for all intents and purposes, be a political product of the Reagan era. Anyone over thirty could well have come of age during a time of Republican Congressional dominance. To the degree that we persist in voting how we started voting, the over-thirty support for McCain could be the result of what happened in the 80s and early 90s.
 
By contrast, the Big Political Facts of the last few years are Iraq and Obama. If they persist in following their current predilections, today’s politikids may be the harbingers of an era of increased Democratic dominance, as, over time, older Republican-leaning voters are replaced by their younger Democratic-leaning counterparts.
 
I’d be crying in my beer, if only I still drank the stuff. (Red wine's better for the heart.)
 
At least at first glance, a somewhat more comforting explanation is the so-called parent or, more properly, marriage gap. Folks over thirty are more likely to be married, to have children, and to own a home than are their younger compatriots. With roots in the community and parental concerns, they have something to conserve. They’re also more likely to find their way to church. Finally, since there’s a connection between marital stability and general familial prosperity, they’re less likely to be dependent upon government for support. All of these factors make these groups currently more likely to favor the Republican candidates.