RSS Feed MenuYouth support for Republicans first cratered in the Northeast, and has led to the virtual extinction of elected GOP officials there. In 1999, there were 12 House Republicans from New York. Today there are 3. These losses aren’t very surprising given that New York’s youth voted Democratic by almost 80% last year. Parts of New York, like the upstate region and my home, the Long Island suburbs, are fiscally conservative and socially moderate. They were once solid Republican districts. They are all Democratic now, because Republican positions on a number of social issues (among them gay rights) run very much to the right of their own views and have turned away 8 in 10 young voters.
What happened in the Northeast is now spreading throughout the country, most notably in the parts of the South with the highest levels of young, college educated voters. In North Carolina, 72% of voters under 30 voted for Obama. McCain won every other age group, but this didn’t matter; the youth vote offset the support of older voters. As the voters of 2008 who were 65 and older (and voted for McCain by 56%) are replaced with younger voters, Democratic margins in North Carolina are likely to improve. The Tar Heel state could, in the next few election cycles, become a solid blue state and will likely be joined by Virginia (where Obama won 60% of the youth vote). Similar margins among the young were found out West, with Obama winning more than two-thirds of young voters in the battleground states of New Mexico and Colorado. These two former red states will gain electoral votes in the future and will be vital for many elections to come. Republicans can no longer afford to lose the youth by a landslide.
Many Republicans feel that winning young voters through more modern positions on issues like gay rights will alienate evangelicals, the “backbone” of the party. This assertion may be correct in the near-term, but it overlooks the future. In future election cycles, evangelical voters will not as significant a voting block as they have been in the past. The Pew Research Group’s Religious Landscape Survey, showed that the percentage of evangelicals under the age of 30 has fallen from 22% in the 1970s to 17% today and underscores a falling population of evangelicals.
Youths who still identify as evangelical are far more open-minded than their parents. 26% support marriage equality (up from 9% among evangelicals over 30) and many more support civil unions.
These voters also don’t consider social issues to be as important as their parents do. This is best shown by the rise of the pastor Rick Warren. Warren, though criticized recently by liberals for his support for Prop 8, is largely a liberal himself. He stresses fighting global warming and using big government to end poverty; opposition to gay rights is not a “litmus test”.
The evangelical population is falling, young evangelicals are more liberal, and new evangelical leaders are moving away from a central focus on dogma. Republicans who argue against supporting gay rights for fear of losing evangelicals are mortgaging their own future; they are turning away younger generations in exchange for a shrinking voting block.
As we all know by now, the past election focused on the issue of change. The Republicans lost much of the youth by not offering the 21st century change that young voters wanted. Let’s show young people that Republicans are in sync with their modern world by leading the charge for gay rights and equality for all. We can compete for their votes again by showing them that we are a party of small government instead of a party of small minds.
HollywoodBill // Jan 26, 2009 at 5:23 pm
While the loss in November goes to McCain the Palinistas have to accept that she was as much of the problem as he was. McCain would have been the oldest President ever elected. 72 is not the new 50. The electorate rejected putting a religious extremist with no real credentials a heart beat away from the Oval Office. Palin and Jindal are not the future of the GOP. They are regional candidates. The last two dinosaurs left standing after the meteor strike.
sinz54 // Jan 26, 2009 at 6:09 pm
HollywoodBill: Palin had little to do with McCain’s loss. Americans never vote for the Vice-President, they vote for the President. In 1988, Dan Quayle was made a virtual laughingstock (unfairly, I believe). But that didn’t stop George H. W. Bush from beating Dukakis handily.
Note also that after the GOP convention and the speech there by Palin, McCain actually pulled ahead of Obama in the polls. But just a few weeks later, the U.S. financial market fell off a cliff, sparking a national economic crisis. McCain’s frenetic but unfocused and ineffectual attempts to deal with it, turned off the voters and quickly sank his candidacy. Obama seemed more statesmanlike, just for not getting rattled by the bad news from Wall Street. And in the presidential debates, Obama seemed to have better command of economic issues than McCain did. McCain’s obsession with earmarks wasn’t appealing to many voters. If the GOP had known that the bottom was going to fall out of the U.S. economy in September, they might have thought twice about nominating McCain, who had actually admitted that economics wasn’t his strongest suit.
DougD // Jan 26, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Well, the one thing that’s crystal clear in this thread is that people who care about the future of the GOP disagree strongly. My point, some hours ago is: let’s bail on the stuff we disagree about and focus on the stuff we agree on. The GOP should not be a party of social advocacy – pro-gay, anti-gay. A pox on both of your houses. People need to get this out into the streets and sort it out – don’t form a circular firing squad and destroy our chances in coming elections.
HollywoodBill // Jan 26, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Sinz54, as usual, the Palinistas somehow seem to think that the MooseHunter gets a pass for the loss. She does not. While she started off high as any unknown newcomer would, she ended up having the highest negatives of any of the 4 principals running. Her endless mindnumbing interviews with Gibson and Couric as well as Tina Fey’s accurate satire helped doom her. Her kids needed to be at least tutored while on the road instead of being used as props. Palin’s pregnant, high school drop unmarried daughter is not exactly the role model of a first or second family. The GOP lost every single suburb in America including Dallas and Houston. Like it or not, the Palinistas will have to accept that Palin will have the same fate as every other failed VeeP candidate. She is not Presidential material except in the minds of the social conservatives. And there aren’t enough of them to win national elections.