Will Old Fogeys Curse The Democrats With Biden?

Last night I had a  long working-dinner with a world-famous author and neuroscientist whose new book on the aging brain is coming out early next year. He was explaining to me why the average person reports that their happiest years were around 80, if they live that long. There were quite a few reasons but one big one had to do with a tendency to shut out negativity and to focus exclusively on good news and happy memories (or happy manufactured memories). This is working out extraordinarily well for Biden, whose support among extremely old Democrats is overwhelming. Believe it or not, the Democratic Party could be saddled with Biden-- and because Trump will eat him alive-- another 4 years of Trump-- because of the votes of happy seniors, many of whom will never live to experience the results of a status quo policy agenda (Biden) or a reactionary policy agenda (Trump) that their votes curse the rest of us with.

This kind of messaging won't do a bit of good in shattering Biden's base of support (people over 75)

Every poll that breaks down the demography of the 2020 preference polls shows Bernie crushing it-- both nationally and in the early states-- among young voters. Elderly voters-- unable to recall why they once hated Biden's Republican instincts-- overwhelmingly prefer him to Bernie or any of the other candidates. Younger voters, who tend to be more idealistic and less apt to back corrupt corporate candidates like Biden, are a chink in Biden's armor. The problem, say the Democratic establishment types behind Biden, is that younger voters don't vote. Really? That don't vote when all they have to chose between are garbage candidates like Status Quo Joe and any Republican, but they're going to have to re-think that truism now.

A Future To Believe In-- or Trump/Biden

The Pew Research Center put out a fascinating poll yesterday that didn't ask about political preferences. What it showed is that Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X out-voted older generations in the 2018 midterms. That is an immense thunderclap that just landed on American political science. I knew that that was how AOC won her race but it turns out that it had a determining influence on how the Democrats managed to do so well in 2018.

Midterm voter turnout reached a modern high in 2018, and Generation Z, Millennials and Generation X accounted for a narrow majority of those voters, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available Census Bureau data.

The three younger generations-- those ages 18 to 53 in 2018-- reported casting 62.2 million votes, compared with 60.1 million cast by Baby Boomers and older generations. It’s not the first time the younger generations outvoted their elders: The same pattern occurred in the 2016 presidential election.

Higher turnout accounted for a significant portion of the increase. Millennials and Gen X together cast 21.9 million more votes in 2018 than in 2014. (The number of eligible voter Millennials and Gen Xers grew by 2.5 million over those four years, due to the number of naturalizations exceeding mortality.) And 4.5 million votes were cast by Gen Z voters, all of whom turned 18 since 2014.

By comparison, the number of votes cast by Boomer and older generations increased 3.6 million. Even this modest increase is noteworthy, since the number of eligible voters among these generations fell by 8.8 million between the elections, largely due to higher mortality among these generations.

Millennials, Gen Xers and Boomers all set records for turnout in a midterm election in 2018. Turnout rates increased the most for the Millennial generation, roughly doubling between 2014 and 2018 – from 22% to 42%. Among Generation Z, 30% of those eligible to vote (those ages 18 to 21 in this analysis) turned out in the first midterm election of their adult lives. And for the first time in a midterm election, more than half of Gen Xers reported turning out to vote. While turnout tends to increase with age, every age group also voted at higher rates than in 2014, and the increase was more pronounced among younger adults.

Together, Gen Z and Millennials reported casting 30.6 million votes, a quarter of the total. Gen Z was responsible for 4.5 million, or 4%, of all votes. This post-Millennial generation is just starting to reach voting age, and their impact will likely be felt more in the 2020 presidential election, when they are projected to be 10% of eligible voters.

Millennials, ages 22 to 37 in 2018, cast 26.1 million votes, far higher than the number of votes they cast in 2014 (13.7 million).

Generation X, those ages 38 to 53 in 2018, cast 31.6 million votes-- the first time they had more than 30 million votes in a midterm election. Their turnout rate also increased, from 39% in 2014 to 55% four years later.

Baby Boomers, those ages 54 to 72 in 2018, had their highest-ever midterm election turnout (64%, the same rate as the Silent Generation) and cast more votes than they ever have in a midterm (44.1 million). Still, they had a relatively smaller turnout increase than the younger generations (53% of Boomers turned out in 2014). Overall, Boomers cast 36% of ballots in last year’s election-- their lowest share of midterm voters since 1986-- because of mortality, while the younger generations are still growing due to naturalizations and adults turning 18.

Europeans attributed the unexpected increase in votes last weekend for Green parties across the EU to the same factors. Younger voters are looking for a better future. The older a voter gets, the more they just don't want anything to change. In Malta, 16 year olds got to vote for the first time, resulting in Malta having the highest turnout of any European country, in an election that same turnout turning much higher across the board almost everywhere. It;'s also worth noting that in Malta, the fascist party disintegrated electorally, the left scored a huge triumph and the mainstream conservative party also went down to a significant defeat.