Bush has lead among young voters
Here’s a harrowing pair of facts for Democrats: In 60 years, no Democrat has ever won the presidency without carrying the youth vote. Right now, President Bush’s approval rating among 18- to 29-year-olds is 62 percent, higher than his nationwide rating.
Top Republican strategists admit the youth vote is fluid, but right now, the trends are all in their direction, which they hope is a harbinger not only for 2004, but also a possible longer-term party realignment.
“It’s called the theory of political socialization,” one Bush campaign official told me. “Who are the most Democratic people in America? It’s the over-65 age group. Why? Because the two presidents they knew best were Franklin Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover.
“And who are the most Republican? People in their 40s, who came of age in the last two years of Jimmy Carter and the first two years of Ronald Reagan.
It seems impossible that a generation reared on free-love TV and rap music, a generation far more tolerant of ethnic diversity and homosexuality than its elders, could support the GOP, whose base is anchored in the religious right. In fact, Democratic theorists such as Ruy Teixeira, John Judis and Stan Greenberg look upon the expanded role of minorities, cosmopolitan regions and diversity-minded young people to produce an “emerging Democratic majority” through the force of demography.
But, at the moment, the numbers support the view of GOP leaders that young people are trending Republican because they like Bush.
Last October, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government conducted a survey whose news release announced: “Defying conventional wisdom, a new poll of America’s college students finds they are significantly more supportive of President Bush than the general public.”
The Harvard study found a plurality of students, 38 percent, identified themselves as independent, but 31 percent said they were Republicans and only 27 percent Democrats.
In 1996, voters aged 18 to 29 supported incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton over GOP challenger Bob Dole by a whopping 19-point margin, 53 percent to 34 percent. Young people were Clinton’s strongest age group.
In November, a Gallup poll found that younger voters identify themselves as more “liberal” on social and economic issues than over-30 voters. And they were substantially more positive toward gay marriage than their elders, 52 percent versus 32 percent.
But in a generic matchup of Bush against an unnamed Democrat, under-30 voters went for Bush by a 49 percent to 39 percent margin, whereas over-30 voters supported him by a margin of 47 percent to 43 percent.
Consistently, Bush’s strongest showing is among voters aged 30 to 49 — 64 percent in the latest Gallup poll — and his weakest is among middle-aged voters, 50 to 64, where it’s 51 percent. Seniors approve of his performance by a 53 percent to 40 percent margin.
No candidate can win the presidency on the strength of young people alone, to be sure. They usually represent only 17 percent of the presidential electorate, about half the proportion of 30- to 49-year-olds.
Yet, they are the future. And, despite cultural influences you’d be sure would make them Democrats, Bush seems to be making it possible that the future will belong to the GOP.
(Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.)