“Millennial” has become a bit of a pejorative in popular media, often deployed as shorthand for a smug hipster who’s a harbinger of neighborhood-destroying regentrification, a self-absorbed entry-level employee who expects a constant stream of participation trophies, or just a clueless naïf who can’t put down the smartphone. Look beyond the stereotypes, though, and you'll see a generation that’s doing a lot of good in the world. For starters, they’re the most liberal generation we’ve seen, identifying with the Democratic Party by a 51-35 ratio (if you include independent leaners), a much wider gap than any other generation. (That’s largely related, though, to the millennials also being, by far, the least-white generation we’ve seen.)
If you were simply going by those media-fed images, you’d probably assume that the most millennial-filled congressional district in the country would be one that includes one of those urban neighborhoods (Williamsburg in New York, Silver Lake in Los Angeles, and so on) that were considered dangerous and dilapidated 20 years ago but where now the main danger is getting run over by some beardo on a fixed-gear bike. That assumption would be wrong: If you want to find the most millennials, you’d look to rural Texas, and its 17th congressional district.
Or … that’s only partly true—there’s no uniform definition for “millennial,” but Pew Research defines it as the generation of adults born after 1980, which means people in the 20-35 age range. The Census Bureau, of course, refuses to call anybody a “millennial,” but, helpfully, reports demographic data using a 20-24 bucket and the 25-34 bucket, which neatly covers those same years. The district with the most 25-34 year olds (according to 2014 data) is New York's 12th, which contains a lot of people crowded into the city to get started on their careers and which we’ve already discussed as the nation's most college-educated district (note, though, that the 12th is the Upper East Side and Astoria, not the stereotypical hipster wards of Williamsburg and Bushwick). If you narrow it down to the 20 to 24-year-old cohort, the top district is Texas’s 17th; 11.6 of the district’s population falls in that cohort, compared with the national average of 7.1 percent.
Is that because of all the young people getting started in their careers in oil drilling and tumbleweed harvesting? No, it’s because the 17th contains two very large universities: Texas A&M University in College Station, and Baylor University in Waco. A&M, one of the nation’s largest, has an enrollment of 64,000 and Baylor has nearly 17,000. (Baylor is a private institution associated with the Baptist Church, and has recently been in the news with the demotion of former president and former Bill Clinton inquisitor Ken Starr in the wake of a sexual assault scandal involving its football team.)
Although it’s a geographically sprawling district, occupying much of the terrain in the middle of the triangle that has Dallas, Houston, and Austin at its points, nearly half its population is found in the counties that contain Waco and College Station. And some of the rest of its population is in a small finger that reaches to the west to grab a piece of the Austin area (in order to dilute the large Democratic vote in Travis County and keep that county from having more than one Dem-friendly district).
With all those millennials, though, the 17th should still be a Democratic-leaning district, though, right? Well, no. Barack Obama lost the 17th 38 to 60 to Mitt Romney in 2012, and didn’t fare much better in 2008, losing to John McCain 41 to 58. Not only do you have a lot of arch-conservatives in the rural part of the district, but even Texas A&M and Baylor have the reputation of being two of the most conservative Division I schools anywhere. Even if you narrow it down to the two counties where the college towns are, Obama lost McClellan County (Waco) to Romney 34-62 and lost Brazos County (College Station) 31-66. In other words, the college towns are even more conservative than the district as a whole.
Despite the lean at the presidential level, this district actually elected a moderate Democrat, Chet Edwards, from 2004 to 2010 (who had the reddest district of any House Dem during that period); Edwards was targeted for elimination by being put here by the DeLaymander in 2004 but kept on surviving anyway until the extinction event of 2010. Since 2010, the district has been held by Republican Bill Flores. Flores, who is 62, is the chair of the Republican Study Committee (which previously was the far-right caucus but, with the introduction of the House Freedom Caucus, has instead become the GOP’s de facto middle ground), and got some mentions as a replacement speaker in the wake of John Boehner’s resignation. Unless Flores is surprised by a tea partier in a future primary, though, he won’t be dislodged from the 17th anytime soon.
“The Most District” is an ongoing series devoted to highlighting congressional district superlatives around the nation. Click here for all posts in this series.