Posted by Todd Zywicki:
Greg Mankiw on the Youth Vote:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_11_02-2008_11_08.shtml#1226000843
Greg Mankiw has a chart illustrating the dramatic drop in the youth
vote for McCain versus Bush. He concludes:
So what does the Republican Party need to do to get the youth vote
back? If these Harvard students are typical (and perhaps they are
not, as Harvard students are hardly a random sample), the party
needs to scale back its social conservatism. Put simply, it needs
to become a party for moderate and mainstream libertarians. The
actual Libertarian Party is far too extreme in its views to attract
these students. And it is too much of a strange fringe group. These
students are, after all, part of the establishment. But a reformed
Republican Party could, I think, win them back.
Can the Republican Party move in this direction without losing much
of its base? I have no idea, but for the GOP, that seems to be the
challenge ahead.
I'm still not sure what to make of the youth voters. [1]I noted
yesterday that looking at the exit polls, it appears that the two most
pro-Obama groups in the election were under-29 and 50-64 cohort, which
roughly corresponds to Baby Boomers and their kids.
One experienced political hand told me in an email that "youth are
notoriously fickle" and that in his view it is just a matter of
finding an attractive candidate (like Obama). And while that is likely
part of it, it doesn't seem like the full story to me.
If I had to guess, it wasn't just that Obama attracted young voters,
it is also that George Bush had a dramatic negative effect in driving
away young voters. In this sense, I think back to myself and my
generation, attending college in the 1980s. At that time, my tendency
toward libertarian/conservatism was as much a negative reaction to
Jimmy Carter and liberalism as an attraction to Ronald Reagan and
conservatism (as well as the influence of my parents).
One final note--Mankiw notes that his students generally prefer free
market economic policies and liberal social policies (which is why he
sees them as libertarian). One thing to keep in mind is that today's
recent college grads have been raised in an environment of about 25
years of virtually uninterrupted economic prosperity, with some minor
downturns, but nothing major. I suspect that this has contributed to a
general lack of urgency on the economic issues relative to social
issues and environmentalism. When I was a kid, the economy and my
family finances were dominated by stagflation, gas shortages, and
international decline (remember the Iran hostage situation and
helicopters crashing in the desert?).
I suspect that this backdrop has something to do with how people form
their political beliefs. Today's students have been able to take
prosperity and basically sound economic policies for granted (until
recently, perhaps, but we are still well below the misery of the
Carter years). So economics haven't been burning issues and so they've
emphasized lifestyle and symbolic issues. When I was a kid, it didn't
feel like we could take economic prosperity for granted, and that was
something that dominated our worldview. The real question becomes what
happens if economic times become more challenging or if efforts on
environmental regulation substantially impact economic prosperity (as
[2]Bill Niskanen suggests). Not to mention the fact that this looks
like a vote to put off for at least another four years the ticking
time bomb of Social Security and Medicare (Niskanen again). My hope
for the good of the country, of course, is that we won't confront a
major economic slowdown that forces a renewed focus on economic
issues.
I have no idea what this means for the future of the youth vote. But
if it means that the Republican Party (and I hope the Democrats too)
move in a more libertarian direction, then sign me up.
References
1.
http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_11_02-2008_11_08.shtml#1225920307
2.
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/11/05/libertarian-election-issues-oped-cx_wan_1106niskanen.html
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