I like information. Much of it I know to take with a grain of salt and I come by that as someone who thinks they understand the difference between fantasy and reality. Sometimes it’s really not that clear of a distinction. Seriously, I can make the case that in this country we mostly live in a fantasy world and I think I could get at least 35% or more of the people to agree with me on any given day. Anyway that’s not what this is about. This is about the exit polls and the growing narrative that this could be a generational election.
Lets begin by identifying our sources of information and making a couple of disclosures. I used the CNN exit polls for the Democratic Primaries where they did exit polling beginning with the contests following Tsunami Tuesday and continuing through the contests in IN & NC. I also used data from the Census Bureau dated 2004 so I had to do some extrapolation to get current to 2008. In many cases I think the error in my data and analysis is within acceptable tolerances. Also this is a lose abstract of the study as I didn’t have the time to post the graphs and tables not to mention I’d have to learn how. :)
Lastly, I simply used the list of generations provided in Wikipedia.
There are essentially four major age groups that the exit pollsters consistently divide the voting participants into. Sometimes they break it down a bit more but the only consistently available numbers for the 12 states in this analysis is from the four age groups (18-29, 30-44, 45-59, & 60+).
I used the Census data to identify the number of people at each age in each generation. Obviously the age groups identified by the pollsters do not necessarily line up with the generational brackets so by basically grouping the generations according to the pollsters and having the number of people in each age bracket makes it more apples to apples for comparison of the exit polling data with the numbers of people in those age groups.
There are very few of the Greatest Generation left. Since I only have 2004 Census data for this study, I had to make an adjustment so I dropped about one million of this generation leaving us with around eight million survivors. The youngest of this generation would be 84 years old today and as an aside, I assume, more female than male.
The Silent Generation today falls into the age range of 64-83. I didn’t adjust for any attrition in this group so the numbers are just advanced from the 60-79 ages that were on the books in 2004. There were 38.4 million of these folks in the study. This is John McCain’s generation.
The Baby Boomers are split into two sub-generations with the boomers being identified as those age 55-63 and generation Jones being between the ages of 44-54. Again not allowing for any attrition, Boomers age 60 and above are numbered at 13 million. This is the first cut-off in the pollster’s four age brackets. So at 60 and above we have a total of 59.4 million people not allowing for very much attrition over the past four years.
Hillary wins this group consistently. These are her voters and if every one of them voted according to the pattern identified in the exit polls for the combined 12 states of this study, she would have 35.7 million potential voters in this group while Barack would have 23.8 million or a 60-40 split. Of course, we’re back to fantasy now because we’ve completely eliminated the Republican Party. Oh if that were only not a fantasy. :)
UPDATE:I found a source to quantify the attrition rate for the different generations and I was pretty far off by just reducing the 60+ group by one million. According to the rates for 2005 found here I would guess that this age group actually lost about 8.3 million members over the past four years, 7.3 million more than I accounted for. So instead of 59.4 million, their numbers are probably more like 52.1 million.
Anyway, these oldest voters have constituted on average 24.8% of the Democratic Primary vote in the 12 states used for the analysis.
Generation Jones and the balance of the true Boomers number 63.2 million and Hillary and Barack have pretty much split this group right down the middle. Again this is the 45-59 age group the pollsters identify in their survey. So they each get 31.6 million potential voters here.
This age group reached an average participation level in the 12 Democratic Primaries of 34.4% as measured by percent of total participants.
Next comes Generation X. Now things start getting exciting. Generation X essentially dominates the 30-44 age group the pollsters use. There are 55.5 million X’ers in this group and they joined the last year of the Joneses which number 4.8 million for a combined 60.2 million potential voters in this age bracket. Obama dominates this bracket 57.5%-42.5%. So he picks up 34.6 million potential voters to Hillary’s 25.6 million.
These X’ers have made up on average 24.5% of the Democratic primary voters identified in the 12 states of our analysis.
The last age group, 18-29 are mostly made up by Generation Y. There are three years of the X’ers who are still in this age group and they number 12.4 million. When added to the Y’ers which has 34.6 million in this age group, we get 47 million potential voters here. Barack wins this group 65% - 35%. In most general election matchups he has almost comparable margins over McCain. Anyway he gets 35.6 million potential voters and Hillary gets 16.5 million. Another thing to keep in mind is that this is not all of the Y’ers. The Y’ers are a huge generation. They will add 7.6 million more potential voters to the pool for Barack’s first mid-term elections, another 7.6 million for his re-election in 2012, another 7.6 million for his final mid-terms and still another 7.6 million to ensure that his vice-president is elected to the White House when he leaves to take over the United Nations.
These kids, the ones who are or will be old enough to vote this year have been 14.7% of the participants as reflected in the polling data for these 12 states.
In summary, I wanted to show the relative participation rates in the Democratic Primaries studied where the numbers tell the tale.
The Elders numbering 59.5 million voted in rates that were equivalent to being 57 million (note: this could be because I didn’t allow for much attrition in the numbers since 2004)
The Boomers and the Joneses numbering 63.2 million voted in rates that were equivalent to being 79.1 million. These people obviously have some dedication to democracy.
The X’ers numbering 60.2 million voted in rates that were equivalent to 56.3 million. I don’t suppose that’s too bad given the demands on younger families.
The Y’ers, with 47 million eligible for participation now, voted in rates that were equivalent to 33.8 million.
In conclusion, I would like to make a proposal and solicit suggestions for offensive action to increase participation rates in the younger age groups that is different from the same old politics in this country. I believe it is a civic duty to speak up on behalf of our nation. That, in my view as a veteran of the U.S. Navy, is being patriotic. I understand some people don’t want anything to do with the process. They are just plain cynical. Most of those people with those attitudes are older though I’m sure much of that sort of sentiment is passed on to younger citizens.
Still, in thinking about what could be done, I considered the Motor Voter (registration) Bill which was a huge step in the right direction. I think we should go farther with all sorts of avenues to automatically get people registered and educated for voting. I think participation in the process is important for our country so I think the government, not the parties, should make every effort to get people to register. I don’t think I would support mandates but encouragement and easy access, yes.
I will make a couple of suggestions and perhaps if you care to comment, you can add to the list.
All public & private secondary schools should be encouraged to provide non-partisan registration programs for their students.
The government should work in partnership with something like the utility companies to distribute materials and reminders to all citizens to facilitate ease of voting.
If a certain form of identification is to be required, access to acquiring that form of identification should be made very convenient and essentially cost free. Additionally, there should be ready made solutions for known issues that prevent certain peoples from having the necessary documentation normally required to prove identity.
Obviously, my analysis is tainted by the limited number of states providing exit polling data and of course the outdated census data. Still, I don’t think there would be a significant shift in the findings of this brief overview of the question as to whether or not this is a generational election. The answer in my view is yes. This is a generational election and it’s easily the most exciting election of my lifetime.
I did total up the voting pools based on the exit polls and Barack's pool of potential voters add up to 120.6 million where even not accounting for much attrition over the past four years Hillary's pool adds up to 109.3 million.
Update II:Interesting those totals work out to Obama 52.5%, Clinton 47.6%. The current pledged delegate count stands at Obama 52.5%, Clinton 46.9%.
By the way, I, like Barack and Caroline Kennedy, am a Jones.
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