The GOP’s lost generation of millennial voters

[applegrove]

The GOP’s lost generation of millennial voters

By Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gops-lost-generation-of-voters/2016/04/28/06f8efe4-0d7d-11e6-8ab8-9ad050f76d7d_story.html?tid=ss_tw-bottom

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The GOP is poised to permanently lose a generation of voters, and not (only) because of its odious and uncommonly disliked presidential front-runner. New survey data suggest that young people have become increasingly averse to just about every plank in today’s creaky Republican Party platform.

By now it’s well known that young Americans are considerably more liberal than the Republican Party on most social issues, particularly gay rights. The GOP’s own 2012 election “autopsy,” which proposed ways to broaden the party’s base, emphasized that Republicans must change their “tone” on social issues that young people see “as the civil rights issues of our time.”

The latest youth poll from Harvard’s Institute of Politics, though, indicates that LGBT-related policies aren’t the only ones on which young people and Republican traditionalists part ways.

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Compared with responses from the past few years, today’s 18- to 29-year-olds are more likely to believe that “basic health insurance is a right for all people,” that “basic necessities, such as food and shelter, are a right that government should provide to those unable to afford them” and that “the government should spend more to reduce poverty.”



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[guillaumeb]

1. Recommended. Now if these millenials will vote............

and organize, and talk to their representatives, and run for office.......

[applegrove]

2. Absolutely Democrats need to work on getting them out to vote in every election to come. I would

have been very happy with Bernie as the Democratic nominee, but you can't rely on the millenials voting, even in the primaries Bernie has been in.

[guillaumeb]

3. Sad but true.

For many years, the GOP has been pushing the idea that government is somehow the enemy. That destructive meme is everywhere. Is it any wonder that so many people feel that nothing good can be accomplished by participation in elections?

My feeling is that part of the apathy can be explained by this GOP inspired and sourced negativity, and by the fact that the GOP controlled Congress has done nothing for 7 plus years.

[SunSeeker]

4. Yes, that and the equally false & destructive meme that the two parties are the same. nt

[jeff47]

6. Yes, Democrats have not supplied any fodder for that.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go support a free trade deal, chained CPI in Social Security, and ground troops in Syria while celebrating that single payer will never, ever pass.

[guillaumeb]

11. I am still waiting for the President to lace up his walking shoes

and join someone, somewhere, sometime, in a picket line.

[litlbilly]

5. They are gonna vote in droves and it wont be for Hillary or the GoP

[lamp_shade]

7. In the General Election, Hillary will quite comfortably have the droves of millennial voters.

[eridani]

8. A Clinton nomination means losing them as Democrats as well

Not as voters--I suspect they will keep the habit of voting for Democrats. But that's ALL they will do. No joining party organizations, canvassing, phonebanking and the like.

[eridani]

10. And I am pointing out that there is a difference between voting and being politically active

I'd like to see the kids hang around and be active. Apparently you prefer to tell them to go to hell.