Youth Engagement in American Politics: A Shifting Landscape
Youth engagement in American politics serves as an important indicator of the ideological direction in which the nation is headed. For the last couple of decades, it has looked like our nation’s young people have been mostly aligned with the Democratic Party. But recent research points to an important shift in how young people are aligning, and it’s something that hasn’t occurred for many years.
For the first time since 2008, the support level for the Democratic Party among young people has gone below 50%. That’s something that hasn’t happened for a long time. And to be fair and to be clear, it’s not just young people in general; it’s young men in particular, whose support level for the Republican Party has surged over the last seven years from 35% to 48%.
A Serious Shift in Voting Patterns
The shift we are observing is serious. An election cycle that once saw 53% of our young people voting for the Democratic Party now sees a far lower percentage, below 50%. In fact, the young audience has shifted 3-4% per election year toward the Republican Party; in 2024, we will likely see our young people favoring the GOP by an even larger margin. Most of this shifting is happening with young men, who are really the only demographic group that has consistently moved toward the Republican Party since 2000.
Understanding the Reasons Behind the Shift
What’s going on? Why are young people moving right, particularly young men? Well, let me share what some experts are saying. The primary reason most of them cite is that our young people are really feeling the economic pinch.
The historical context of youth voting patterns shows that a youthful trend in voting typically brings Democratic support. This is usually because the young are becoming more progressive, particularly on social issues and those related to economic equity. But at present, we are in a climate of economic uncertainty and cultural polarization, which have made young men much more open to supporting the Republican Party.
Recent policies of the Biden administration have benefited young women more. For example, 66 percent of student debt is owed by females, and they will benefit more from the administration’s student loan forgiveness program. In contrast, young men seem to like the idea of extending Trump’s tax cuts, which largely benefit corporate interests.
Economic Stratification Among Young People
For young men and women, the economic environment seems to be stratifying. Young men—who are not winning in the job market and whose labor force participation is notably declining—are understandably shifting toward Republican policies that promise tax cuts and a more favorable business environment. Meanwhile, young women are doing better in the economy. They are participating in the labor force at a higher rate than young men, and they are achieving higher levels of educational attainment.
But this greater economic security doesn’t seem to translate into an equal amount of concern for issues that are being prioritized by the Republican Party. For instance, the issue of reproductive rights—an issue that 70 percent of young women say is very or somewhat important to them—hardly registers on the radar screen of young men.
The Republican Party’s Appeal to Young Men
For a long time, young women have exercised the franchise at a greater rate than have young men. Today, however, the Republican Party is successfully courting male voters from Generation Y. The party’s efforts to lure this demographic have the potential to upend what has long been a pretty set electoral pattern.
The challenge for the left is to re-engage young men in such a way that their voting patterns become more like those of the young women in their lives, who, for a long time now, have been voting Democrats into office. These aren’t the only challenges the left faces, but they sure are some of the biggest.
A Political Realignment?
Some argue that the change in voting patterns among young men is a normal reaction to certain surface-level issues. However, the data do not bear out this interpretation. In fact, the voting rise of young men toward the Republican Party has solidified over the last few years and, with a couple of exceptions, has occurred in several election cycles. The recent midterm elections saw young men voting even more for Republicans than in the past.
This demographic shift looks like a political realignment—one that increasingly is defining societal change. Because young men now gravitate in large numbers toward the Republican Party, the average person must wonder what this portends. Following the tenets of the Republican Party has a couple of major resonances that I want to discuss. One is that increasingly, it looks like the young men are following the Republican Party into a pro-business, anti-economic regulation, and anti-tax space.
Implications for the Democratic Party
In American politics, a critical moment is evolving: Support for the Democratic Party is declining among young men. For a host of reasons—some economic, some cultural, and some bound up in the kind of identity politics that have become the prevalent currency of both major parties—young men are voting more Republican.
For the Democratic Party, this is a double-edged sword. Not only does it threaten to use up one of the formidable strengths the party had—its ability to generate support among young voters—but it also pushes the party toward a more centrist, less progressive stance if it hopes to win back young men and to hold on to its core base among young women. Whatever direction the party takes, the loss of young men is a significant and ominous trend.