Where Have All the Young Democrats Gone?

[Celerity]

https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/where-have-all-the-young-democrats

Since the 2008 election, Democrats have been counting on young voters as an essential part of what they called a "new American majority." But the 2024 election may have spelled the end of the youth vote as a dependable part of the Democrats' coalition. Parts of it should endure—in particular, young college-educated women—but other parts may fall by the wayside unless Democrats find a way to win them back.

The Democrats' large-scale support among young voters goes back to the early 2000s. In the Reagan-Bush years, young people had backed Republicans. Clinton won a plurality and then a majority of young voters in 1992 and 1996, but George W. Bush and Al Gore each got 47 percent of the 18-to-24-year-old vote in 2000. The shift to the Democrats begins in the 2004 election when Democrat John Kerry won the youth vote against Bush 56 to 43 percent. In 2008, Barack Obama won the 18–29-year-old vote by an even wider margin, 60 to 32 percent. That trend continued through the 2020 election when Biden won the youth vote 60 to 36 percent.

These young voters increasingly identified themselves as "liberal." According to Gallup, in 1994, 33 percent of 18-29 year olds described themselves as "liberal" or "very liberal." In 2021, it was 63 percent combined. The percentage of young people identifying themselves as "very liberal" also rose, particularly in the 2010s, from about six percent in 2010 to about 20 percent in 2020. In the 2016 presidential primaries, 18-29 year olds gave more votes to Bernie Sanders, who ran as a "democratic socialist," than to the combined total of Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. Similarly, in a 2022 Pew poll, 44 percent of young adults had a positive view of socialism and only 40 percent of capitalism.

The Democrats' success with young people depended in part on the quality of their candidates. Bill Clinton and Obama were charismatic candidates who faced older, stodgier opponents. But the fact that the trend started in 2004 and 2006—continuing through Hillary Clinton's and then Joe Biden's candidacies—and reflects a rising sympathy toward liberalism plus a hostility toward capitalism suggests that there were broader underlying factors. These included young people's response to the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina (which awakened fear of climate change), the Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

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[speak easy]

1. Off from landlords everyone

When will they ever learn ... votes won't pay the rent?

[speak easy]

3. Yeah, well rent-scams have been around since Reagan.,

but Dems stood back and sighed. So repay ém them with GOTV?

[Autumn]

10. Not as bad as it is today.

[NewHendoLib]

2. My intuition tells me that many have been sucked into so much right leaning fear/conspiracy crap

on the various social media tools they are glued to that they've gone to the dark side.

[Think. Again.]

4. Scared away by the harsh rhetoric about them...

...coming from a certain segment of establishment Democrats maybe??

[SocialDemocrat61]

6. I agree on that

Those 30 and under who I know don’t like how some older democrats don’t listen to their concerns.

[Iggo]

5. I suspect it's the usual reason.

They show up to fight, and we tell them to be quiet and wait their turn.

Ain’t no mystery.

[Autumn]

11. That's it!

[H2O Man]

7. Recommended.

Most of the young adults that I know are registered independents. They may favor some Democrats like AOC and Bernie over any republican, but they do not think most elected officials in DC represent them in meaningful ways.

[GoreWon2000]

8. It's young women who are paying with the loss of their reproductive rights

[dalton99a]

9. A very important question.