The other day I realized that students entering the university will have been born in 2003 or 2004. Besides making me feel extraordinarily old, I realized that they won’t have experienced many of the historical anchors that I have. They were born several years after 9/11. They probably won’t remember the Great Recession. I suspect that their political awakening will be the Trump/Clinton election. This is such a massively different social context than what I experienced. It’s weird to think that they probably feel about the Great Recession as I felt about the fall of the USSR/Berlin Wall. I was technically alive, but it wasn’t exactly on my radar.

I’ve assumed that young people were invariably progressive / left-leaning / members of the Democratic party, since that was my experience and seemed to have been pretty common since at least the countercultures of the 1960s. But the context these young people experienced is so different than mine, and I realized that I’ve never actually looked at any data.

So I opened up the GSS and tracked partisan attitudes among two groups of young people: 21-29 year olds, and folks 20 years old and under. Below are simple trends across birth cohorts between those born in 1945 and 2002 among the entire 1972-2021 GSS data. Color schemes are: blue=left/democratic, black=moderate/independent, red=right/republican.

Oh … weird. Ok, the top row are folks 21-29. The bottom row is folks 20 and under. The left column tracks folks who identify as Liberal/Moderate/Conservative. The right column tracks folks who identify as Democrats/Independents/Republicans.

Look at the bottom right panel. Me and the other glorious individuals born in the mid-1980s are the highwater mark of Democratic-identifying young people, at least among all those born after 1960. But since then, Democratic affiliation among under 20s has levels off, or slightly declined.

And look at what’s going on with under 20 Republican affiliation: an increase from about 25% in mid 1980s to almost 40% by those born in 2000. That’s not quite at the same highwater mark of ~ 45% among those born around 1970. But it’s close.

I don’t think there’s going to be a resurgence of Reagan youth. If you look at the bottom left panel, there was a moderate surge of conservative views among those born between 1960 and the mid 1970s. But that’s declined among recent cohorts. And among those born in the 1980s and afterward, liberal political views have increased and are about as high as at any time since the middle Baby Boomers.

…but … if we look at the previous Republican surge, there wasn’t a corresponding conservative surge…just a bump.

It also looks like young Republicans turn into slightly older Independents. And among 21-29 year olds, we can see a real and widening gap between growing liberalism and declining conservativism.

Let’s line up the views/parties affiliation to see if anything jumps out:

Democratic and Liberal rates tend to move in unison, compared to Ind/Mod and Rep/Cons. We see the boom/bust of Republican affiliation among young people pretty uncoupled from conservative views. And the booms of partisan waves (Reaganite Gen-Xers, Democratic Millennials) are much easier to see in the under 20 ages than in the 21-29 ages.

It’s still a tad hard for me to see what’s going on here. Let’s line up under 20 and 21-29 trends to see how cohort political views change as cohorts age.

Here we’re looking at party affiliation. Dashed lines are percent of folks under 20 affiliating with particular parties. Solid lines are 21-29. These values are lined up by birth year, so if there’s a large gap between lines, that means particular cohorts became more / less Democratic / Independent / etc.

We see that Gen x-ers, early Millenialls became much more affiliated with the Democratic party in their 20s. There’s not much difference for the younger Millenialls. And maybe some more growth among the oldest Gen Z’ers.

We see some wild stuff for Republican affiliation among young Milliennials / old Gen Z’ers. Massive decline of Republian affiliation in 20s compared to under 20. Looks like maybe a lot of switching to Independent? We see Baby Boomers became more Republican leaning in their 20s, while Gen-X’ers declined substantially in their Republican affiliation in the 20s.

Here we’re looking at partisan views. Lots of fluctuation for liberal values. Baby Boomers became less liberal in their 20s, Gen X-ers became more liberal in their 20s, Millennials less liberal in their 20s, and Gen Zer’s more liberal in their 20s. This all ocurrred with 20-somethings becoming increasingly liberal after a massive decline among the Baby Boomers.

Look at Conservatism. Few things have become less popular among 20-somethings since the beginning of Gen X than conservative views. It’s about as low among today’s 20-somethings as it’s ever been. At the same time, “Moderate” has steadily increased among 20-somethings. Until Gen-Z, cohorts tended to become less moderate as they transitioned into their 20s. But there’s been convergence in recent cohorts, so that in the most recent cohorts there’s no real difference in Moderate viewpoints between under-20s and 21-29'ers.

I draw 3 main conclusions:

2010 onward Republicans completely squandered an amazing opportunity to channel a Right-wave of young people into a new cohort of Republican voters. Massive fumble. It looks like a rising wave of under 20 Republicans vanished as these folks aged. The gaps between a cohort’s youth affiliation and 20-something affiliation is larger than anything else I see in these data. Is this a college thing? A Trump thing? Unclear.
I see a lot less certainty about a steady march leftward among young people. Sure, 20-somethings are increasingly liberal. But this isn’t really translating into Democratic party membership. I’d rather characterize the left / Democrats as someone who took a step forward to pick up a nickel and a piano fell where they were previously standing. Basically…alive because of dumb luck and not much else. “Independent” and “Moderate” are dark horse winners. And historical fluctuation seems to be the rule. Not a steady movement one way or another. I think anyone waiting around for cohort replacement will probably be disappointed.
I’m very curious what will happen with the rise of under-20 Republican affiliation. Will it continue? Will it continue to not translate into Republican 20 somethings? The current gap between under 20- and 20-something Republican affiliation is the largest that I see in the data. Perhaps it’s my preexisting bias, but I have a very hard time imagining that young people will make any meaningful turn rightward. But who knows. History is so weird.