Millennials are fast shedding party affiliation and are identifying as independents. Although that doesn’t spell good news for either major party, the outlook for Republicans is much worse than it is for Democrats. Millennials are falling out of love with the GOP at a rate that must be alarming for the party, especially considering how substantial a voting bloc we are. Should the GOP continue to alienate this sizable and inherently progressive generation, the party’s collapse will prove inevitable.
Millennials are “considerably more liberal than other generations,” according to the Pew Research Center, which makes its determination based on a poll that identifies the professed values of those surveyed. With 50 percent of millennials identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic and just 34 percent affiliating with Republicans or leaning Republican, our values appear to indicate the parties we will support.
The split between party affiliations is more even for preceding generations, particularly baby boomers and the silent generation. More interesting still is that while the values of millennials who lean Democratic typically align with those from elder generations that also identify with the party, this is not the case with millennials who lean Republican.
Much more progressive than their elders, Republican millennials do not recognize themselves in the GOP of today. Instead of seeing the party as representing rational conservatism, millennials have come to identify it with claims of “legitimate rape,” governors who meet with members of domestic terrorist movements and presidential candidates who at gatherings of 1 percenters candidly observe that 47 percent of the population comprises welfare-dependent idiots.
Ranking Republicans may find solace in the belief that people tend to become more conservative as they advance in age, but the jury remains out on this cliche. The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health suggests exposure to larger social networks increases the chances of liberal development, which helps to explains our generally liberal disposition while also suggesting it might actually grow along with our expanded access to larger networks. A 2007 study published in the American Sociological Review indicated the direction of changes in attitudes tends to be toward tolerance, not conservatism.
To millennials, the Republican Party appears to have lost its mind. While some of its tenets and underlying ideas might resonate with some of us, the party’s reactionary approach to science, climate, and reproductive and human rights places it as wholly out of touch with a generation raised with infinite access to information and data. It is no wonder even millennials likely to identify as conservative increasingly feel alienated and unrepresented by it.
Even more unfortunate for the GOP is the fact that resonating with aging millennials is not the only demographic problem facing the party. At present, it struggles to appeal to women and nonwhite voters. One of the points made in the Republican National Committee’s postmortem of the 2012 presidential election was that the party needs to do a better job attracting those to whom its core policies are inherently off-putting. Instead of, say, encouraging a step back from efforts to implement voter identification laws nationwide, which largely have been embraced by elected Republicans across the country and have been proven to reduce the participation of black — and young — voters, the RNC invested $10 million into paying non-whites to talk about the supposed virtues of the party with other non-whites.
These outreach efforts are futile, though, because they don’t get to the core of the problem. The GOP’s race to embrace far-right ideologies — a shift that was accelerated in part by a well-intended, though corporate-financed tea party movement — continues to be compounded in primaries and caucuses where extremist ideologies are rewarded.
Sure, it might be beneficial for a senator to take moderate stances on immigration and reproductive health, which may appeal to a broader base of potential voters, but that senator has to come home and face primary challengers posturing as ideological purists. Suggestions for reform from the RNC are well and good, but there is no local incentive for elected officials to get on board.
The values of the GOP are no longer in line with where young Americans would like to see this country go. The party’s regressive, anti-science, angry white man schtick is inherently repelling. It is out of touch with an America that, more than ever before, readily and emphatically embraces progressive values.
This Republican Party’s race to the right has become parasitic, compounding and intensifying its short-term demographic shortcomings. It will prove catastrophic if it hopes to one day appeal to maturing millennials.
Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was a teenager and is a former candidate for the Legislature. He’s an owner-partner of a Portland-based content production company and lives with his family, dogs and garden in Cornish.