[ Two key Democratic constituencies — the young and the
religiously unobservant — have substantially increased as a share of
the electorate. This shift is striking.]
[[link removed]]

IS THE SURGE TO THE LEFT AMONG YOUNG VOTERS A TRUMP BLIP OR THE REAL
DEAL?  
[[link removed]]


 

Thomas B. Edsall
May 24, 2023
New York Times
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Two key Democratic constituencies — the young and the religiously
unobservant — have substantially increased as a share of the
electorate. This shift is striking. _

, Mike Segar/Reuters

 

There is a lot about the American electorate that we are only now
beginning to see. These developments have profound implications for
the future of both the Republican and the Democratic coalitions.

Two key Democratic constituencies — the young and the religiously
unobservant — have substantially increased as a share of the
electorate.

This shift is striking.

In 2012, for example, white evangelicals — a hard-core Republican
constituency — made up the same proportion of the electorate as the
religiously unaffiliated: agnostics, atheists and the nonreligious.
Both groups stood at roughly 19 percent of the population.

By 2022, according to the Public Religion Research Institute
[[link removed]] (better
known as P.R.R.I.), the percentage of white evangelicals had fallen to
13.6 percent, while those with little or no interest in religion and
more progressive inclinations had surged to 26.8 percent of the
population.

Defying the adage among practitioners and scholars of politics that
voters become more conservative as they age — millennials (those
born between 1981 and 1996) and Gen Z (those born in 1997 and
afterward) have in fact become decidedly more Democratic over time,
according to data compiled by the Cooperative Election Study.
[[link removed]]

I asked Brian Schaffner
[[link removed]],
a political scientist at Tufts who oversees the study, whether he
thought the liberal trends among young voters were a temporary
reaction to Donald Trump or a more significant change in the
electorate.

“I think it’s a real shift,” Schaffner wrote in an email,
quoting an analysis from December 2022 by John Burn-Murdoch of The
Financial Times, “Millennials Are Shattering the Oldest Rule in
Politics
[[link removed]]”:

If millennials’ liberal inclinations are merely a result of this age
effect, then at age 35 they too should be around five points less
conservative than the national average and can be relied upon to
gradually become more conservative. In fact, they’re more like 15
points less conservative and in both Britain and the U.S. are by far
the least conservative 35-year-olds in recorded history.

Schaffner noted that Burn-Murdoch’s article “is pretty convincing
and focuses on not just vote share but also issue positions, so I
don’t think it is just a Trump thing.”

At the same time, Schaffner observed:

Because the population is very big and turnout rates tend to be much
higher for older adults, these trends can be slow to lead to
significant gains. For example, in 2018, I applied a life expectancy
model to our C.E.S. data and using that model I calculated that it
would take more than 20 years for Democrats to gain just 3 percentage
points on their vote share from differential mortality.

Schaffner continued:

Those gains could easily be offset by Republicans doing a bit better
among other groups. For example, part of what has helped them in
recent elections is that even while the share of the population who
are non-college white people is in decline, it is still a large group
that (1) has come to vote more Republican in the past decade and (2)
has seen its turnout rate increase during the same period.

In a report published this month, “What Happened in 2022
[[link removed]],” Catalist
[[link removed]], a progressive data analysis firm,
found more developments among young voters that favor Democrats:
“Gen Z and millennial voters had exceptional levels of turnout, with
young voters in heavily contested states exceeding their 2018 turnout
by 6 percent among those who were eligible in both elections.”

What’s more, as the Catalist report noted,

65 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 supported
Democrats, cementing their role as a key part of a winning coalition
for the party. While young voters were historically evenly split
between the parties, they are increasingly voting for Democrats. Many
young voters who showed up in 2018 and 2020 to elect Democrats
continued to do the same in 2022.

In addition, the report found:

Women voters pushed Democrats over the top in heavily contested races,
where abortion rights were often their top issue. Democratic
performance improved over 2020 among women in highly contested races,
going from 55 percent to 57 percent support. The biggest improvement
was among white non-college women (+4 percent support).

So why haven’t Democrats returned to the kind of majority status the
party enjoyed from the 1930s to the mid-1960s? Why does the
conservative coalition that emerged in the late 1960s remain a
competitive force in 2023?

One answer came from Geoffrey Layman
[[link removed]], a
political scientist at Notre Dame, who noted in an email:

As whites’ and white Christians’ numbers have declined, their
sense of threat and anxiety over losing their dominant position in
American society and culture has increased, making conservatism and
the Republican Party (particularly Republican candidates like Trump
who promise to restore that dominant position) more attractive to
them.

Layman cited 2000 and 2020 data from American National Election
Studies [[link removed]] to prove his
point:

White working-class people, white evangelicals, white Catholics and
white Christians in general all voted significantly more Republican in
2020 than in 2000. White people with no college education: 56 percent
for Bush in 2000, 68 percent for Trump in 2020. White evangelicals who
regularly attend church: 75 percent for Bush in 2000, 89 percent for
Trump in 2020. White Catholics who regularly attend church: 56 percent
for Bush in 2000, 67 percent for Trump in 2020.

Layman noted that data from the General Social Survey
[[link removed]], a series of nationally representative surveys
conducted regularly since 1972, demonstrates the numerical rise in
secular voters: “From 1991 to 2021, the percent of nones increased
from 6 percent to 28 percent of Americans. Also, the percent of people
claiming to never attend religious services increased from 11 percent
to 30 percent between 1991 and 2021.”

The big picture, Layman concluded, “is that religious, demographic
and socioeconomic trends that seem to bode very well for the Democrats
and very poorly for the Republicans have not yet had the expected
effects because there has been a countermobilization toward the G.O.P.
among the declining groups.”

For now, Layman wrote:

Those countervailing trends have left the two parties in about the
same competitive balance as in 2000. However, as the pro-Democratic
sociodemographic trends continue, it will become increasingly
difficult for the G.O.P. to stay nationally competitive with a base of
just white working-class people, devout white Christians and older
white people. The Republicans are starting to max out their support
among these groups.

The white backlash to the growing strength of liberal constituencies
not only prompted conservative voters to back Republicans by higher
margins; they also turned out to vote at exceptionally high rates to
make up for their falling share of the electorate.

Robert Jones [[link removed]],
founder and president of P.R.R.I., pointed out by email that both
white Protestant and white Catholic Christians punch well above their
weight on Election Day: “Key white Christian subgroups — which
strongly supported Trump and Republicans — were significantly
overrepresented in the electorate compared to their proportion of the
population.”

He cited poll data that showed

White evangelicals: proportion of population in 2020, 14 percent,
proportion of voters, 22 percent. White Catholics: proportion of
population in 2020, 12 percent, proportion of voters, 16 percent.

In contrast, Jones wrote, nonreligious voters are somewhat
underrepresented on Election Day: “Religiously unaffiliated:
proportion of population in 2020, 23 percent, proportion of voters, 21
percent.”

White Christians are, in effect, engaged in a herculean struggle to
maintain political power.

“As recently as 2008, when our first Black president was elected,
the U.S. was a majority (54 percent) white Christian country,” Jones
wrote. “By 2014, that proportion had dropped to 47 percent. Today,
the 2022 Census of American Religion shows that figure has dropped
further to 42 percent.”

The Southern Baptist Convention, Jones continued, “the largest white
evangelical denomination, has now lost more than 3 million members
since its peak in the early 2000s.”

I asked Ryan Burge [[link removed]], a political scientist at
Eastern Illinois University who has conducted extensive research on
partisan trends among various religious denominations, why Democrats
haven’t regained firm majority status.

 

Burge emailed to say that he agreed that the rapid rise of the
nonreligious has raised Democratic prospects, but, he noted, “it’s
not like all the nones have shifted to the Democrats. Republicans have
gotten 40 percent of the increase, too.”

In addition, Burge argued, it’s important to distinguish between
consciously secular atheists and agnostics and more passive men and
women who have simply lost interest in religion.

While atheists are solidly Democratic and highly engaged in politics,
Burge said,

Most of the nones — around 60 percent — are nothing in particular.
They are incredibly disengaged from the political process. They
don’t go to school board meetings. They don’t put up political
yard signs. Which means that their voter turnout is very low. They
also aren’t die-hard Democrats. In 2020, they were no more than 64
percent for Biden.

Atheists, in contrast, have become one of the Democrats’ most loyal
constituencies, according to the Cooperative Election Study
[[link removed]], voting 87-9
for Biden over Trump. Agnostics favored Biden 80-17. Together,
atheists and agnostics make up roughly 12 percent
[[link removed]] of
the population.

In a May 15 posting on Substack, “No One Participates in Politics
More Than Atheists
[[link removed]],”
Burge wrote:

Here’s what I believe to be the emerging narrative of the next
several decades: the rise of atheism and their unbelievably high level
of political engagement in recent electoral politics. Let me put it
plainly: Atheists are the most politically active group in American
politics today.

My exchange with Burge prompted him to add another piece to his
Substack, “Given the Rise of the Nones, Why Aren’t Democrats
Winning Most Elections?”

In that essay, Burge elaborated on the point he mentioned earlier:

Every time a party (the Democrats, in this case) tries to appeal to a
new set of voters (nones), it leaves the other part of its flank
exposed (white Christians). The opposite party then swoops in and
takes over that part of the electorate. Thus, parties continue to try
and make their tent bigger, which inevitably pushes other folks out of
the tent to be scooped up by the opposing party.

While the right has engineered a countermovement — a holding action
— that has at least temporarily kept ascendant liberal
constituencies at bay, the trends among young voters have begun to
erode Republican competitiveness.

There is another area in which the Democratic advantage among younger
voters has already begun to pay off: campaign contributions.

In their April 13 paper, “Old Money
[[link removed]]:
Campaign Finance and Gerontocracy in the United States,” Adam
Bonica [[link removed]], a political scientist at
Stanford, and Jacob Grumbach
[[link removed]], a political
scientist at the University of Washington, demonstrate that younger
campaign contributors lean decisively left:

As a group, Millennial/Gen Z donors are overwhelmingly supporting
Democrats and left-leaning organizations and causes, with 85 percent
of these donors with left-of-center DIME (Database on Ideology, Money
in Politics and Elections [[link removed]]) scores.
And of those who donate to Democrats, they are giving
disproportionately to support progressive candidates and causes. This
trend is largely driven by the leftward turn among young professionals
and college graduates.

Bonica and Grumbach continue: “While Millennials and Generation Z
remain heavily underrepresented in fund-raising for now, as their
share of total contribution dollars inevitably increases, the campaign
finance landscape will shift in response.”

The result?

Republicans will be at a disadvantage in fund-raising from the mass
public, forcing them to rely more on megadonors. And in terms of
within-party competition, it signals a much stronger fund-raising
environment for progressives within the Democratic Party.

In another study of the 2022 election
[[link removed]],
released earlier this month, the demographer William Frey
[[link removed]], a senior fellow
at Brookings, cited a steady decline in the share of the electorate
made up of whites with no college degrees, a key source of Republican
support.

The vote share of this cohort fell steadily in every nonpresidential
election — from 50 percent in 2006 to 37.7 percent in 2022. In
contrast, whites with college degrees, an increasingly Democratic
constituency, grew from 30.5 percent of all voters in 2006 to 35.5
percent in 2022.

The nonwhite share of the electorate, Frey found, rose from 19.5
percent in 2006 to 26.7 percent in 2022, a slight drop from the record
27.2 percent in 2018.

Two decades ago, Republican leaders were convinced that the Southern
strategy
[[link removed]] —
initiated by Richard Nixon and followed up by Ronald Reagan with his
successful mobilization of the white working class — was running out
of gas. After they lost for a second time to President Barack Obama,
top Republicans argued in a March 2013 “autopsy report
[[link removed]]”—
issued by the Republican National Committee — that “in the past
six presidential elections, four have gone to the Democratic nominee,
at an average yield of 327 electoral votes to 211 for the
Republican” while “public perception of the party is at record
lows. Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the
party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans
do not like them or want them in the country.”

What should Republicans do, according to the report? “We need to
campaign among Hispanic, Black, Asian and gay Americans and
demonstrate we care about them.” Republicans need to “embrace and
champion comprehensive immigration reform” and “when it comes to
social issues, the party must in fact and deed be inclusive and
welcoming.”

Three years later, in 2016, Donald Trump rejected this strategy out of
hand and instead proved that a Republican candidate stressing the
grievances of white America against immigrants and minorities could,
in fact, win — albeit without a popular vote victory and, so far,
for just one term in the White House.

Trump’s defeat in 2020 revealed some Democratic weaknesses that are
likely to become the focus of future contests as Republicans struggle
to piece together a winning coalition.

The Catalist report points to gains by Trump and Republican candidates
among racial and ethnic minorities. The level of Hispanic support for
Republican House candidates rose from 29 percent in 2016 to 38 percent
in 2020, where it stayed in 2022. In a separate report
[[link removed]] on the 2020 election, Catalist
found Black support for Republican candidates rose by three points
from 7 percent in 2016 to 10 percent in 2020.

These trends virtually guarantee that the Republican Party will pull
out the stops in 2024 in an attempt to persuade a portion of the
minority electorate — religious, conservative, centrist and
entrepreneurial voters of color — to vote for their candidates.

It may be an uphill struggle, but no one should count the Republican
Party out. While overall demographic and ideological trends may be
pointing toward an increase in Democratic clout, the Republicans will
seek to bolster their shrinking white base with support from
ideologically sympatico minorities. This may look like a tough sell
for a party with the Republicans’ record on civil and minority
rights, but in American politics these days, almost anything is
possible.

_Thomas B. Edsall’s column on strategic and demographic trends in
American politics appears in The New York Times every Wednesday. He
has been a weekly contributor to the Opinion section of TheTimes since
2011._

* young voters
[[link removed]]
* progressive change
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]