Since 1996, the Republican Party has placed second to the Democrats among voters aged 18 to 29, and especially in the last two elections with Obama gaining 45.2% of that particular demographic’s vote in 2008 and 60% thereof in 2012. As a result, numerous Republican Presidential hopefuls are making a more concerted effort to attract younger voters.
For example, Carly Fiorina appeared in a popular BuzzFeed video discussing workplace sexism (though ironically her voting record shows she supports policies that are deleterious to women’s health) and Rand Paul and Ben Carson have been touring college campuses. Ben Carson has also been aggressively plugging into social media. In the process, he has acquired nearly five million Facebook fans, though some suspect that some of those Like-clicks may have been purchased. Given that Ben Carson has been caught in a number of lies, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised.
Regardless of all the Republican Party’s best efforts, millennials generally tend to have more liberal values than any age group, regardless of which political affiliation they register, though a Pew Research study published in April 2015 found that 51% of millennials tend to side with the Democrats while only 35% lean Republican. As a result, younger and more socially liberal Republicans often feel ideologically disconnected from the elders of their party, and particularly feel as though their opinions are dismissed, particularly when it comes to issues like gay rights and drug policy reform.
The more liberal values among millennials could also be attributed to the fact that from the Reagan years forward, that same generation has had to contend with the cutting of government subsidies for college education in favor of a tuition-based model, along with more demanding job requirements, stagnating wages, a skyrocketing cost of living and decimated job security. Furthermore, the exponential growth and increasing widespread use of social media has coincided with a heightened sensitivity in regard to the treatment of demographics that have been historically more vulnerable to societal oppression, namely women, non-whites, and members of the LGBT community, along with new scientific discoveries.
With that in mind, as long as the older conservatives continue to behave as though human history stands still and especially to extents that are violent, inflammatory or both, the Republican Party will continue to eat itself as it spirals down the drain of its own creation.
Featured image courtesy of Bailey Weaver via Flickr.