The College Republican National Committee commissioned a report to try to understand how the party stands with voters under thirty. What they discovered was that their policies are almost universally rejected by young voters. Typical terms used to describe the GOP were: “closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned.” Only three percent of young voters thought taxes should be reduced on the rich, while 54% thought taxes for the rich should go up. After perusing the results of several polls and focus groups, the CRNC implored the national party to moderate their position on gay marriage, to stop attacking Planned Parenthood and contraception, to police the rape-defenders and anti-abortion extremists, to develop a completely different economic message, and to recognize “the difference between legal and illegal immigrants and to also differentiate illegal immigrants from the children of illegal immigrants.”
Young voters felt that the GOP’s economic policies only benefit the wealthy.
“Policies that lower taxes and regulations on small businesses are quite popular. Yet our focus on taxation and business issues has left many young voters thinking they will only reap the benefits of Republican policies if they become wealthy or rise to the top of a big business,” the report says. “We’ve become the party that will pat you on your back when you make it but won’t offer you a hand to help you get there.”
And they didn’t share the party’s position on defense spending.
On issues ranging from gay marriage to foreign policy, the report acknowledged ongoing debates within the party. The generation that grew up with a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan appears less interested in defense spending and less concerned about terrorism than older leaders of the GOP, with only 17 percent of respondents from one survey calling keeping citizens safe from terrorism one of their top priorities for elected officials, and many opposing an expanded military.
“Focus group participants consistently characterized Republicans as the party that was strong on defense, but did not always mean that as a positive; the key for the party is to merge that attribute with fiscal responsibility, rather than allowing the two to stand in conflict,” the report said.
While they try to put a brave face on it, highlighting a few areas where Republican policies resonate, the overall impression is that young voters think the Republicans are wrong about almost everything.
There is still a left/right divide among young voters, but that dividing line is very far to the left of where it resides in Congress. Part of this is explained by the general skew we get from gerrymandering and the anti-Democratic Senate and campaign finance rules that let finance dominate our politics. But part of it tells a story about the near-future. Conservatism is a zombie ideology. It’s still walking, but it’s dead.
You left out the efforts in many states to make it more and more difficult for college students to vote, the attempts to make college IDs not legit documents for voting, etc.
However, this has been true for many years, although I grant that it is stronger and more clear now. Yet the Republicans pick up voters in the mid-30s. How does that happen? What changes a person’s party affiliation in the mid-30s? Clearly marriage, children, school issues are part of it.
What happens in the mid-30’s is that property taxes become conflated with general taxes and people become anti-tax. At least that’s my read in Illinois.
Another factor is that as wealth accumulates, fear of inflation sets in and Republican talk of “responsible fiscal policy” sounds important. This also applies to those who have lost big time by that age because they listen to the appeal “You would have a lot more money if Democrats didn’t waste money on welfare and foreign aid.” You can’t argue numbers with them because if they were numerate, they probably would be doing OK, not wasting money on cigarettes, parties, the latest gadgets, movie premiers, lottery tickets, carrying credit card balances, debit card overdraft fees, and the like.
Ha-ha, did the College Fascists actually ask about Repub student vote suppression in their poll?
How did they ask the question? “Do you approve of Repub efforts to reduce fraudulent voting by college students”? Doh! that won’t fly! How about “Do you approve of Repub efforts to reduce voting by low-info college students?” Doh! that seems bad as well. “What do you think of trying to reduce voting by naive students who have been woefully misled to favor Democrats?” Doh! This is harder than we thought….
Collich Repubs better just leave it at polling “voter fraud” and hope for the best…
Do you have any evidence that this is the case? It’s far too early to tell if that is how it will go down when my generation hits 35. We are talking about a recent phenomenon here. The youth were always about even with other age categories, or trended closely to the national average. 2004 was the first election to show something was amiss, but it wasn’t stark yet. 2008 was a plunge, and 2012 was closet to 2008 than the norm (with a shit economy to boot).
And in many years the youth voted less Dem than the 35 category. So let’s just say that I’m skeptical of what you say here. Where is the data instead of the anecdotes and Winston Churchill quotes? IMO we won’t know until at least 2016, but prolly 2020.
It’s walking because young people tend not to vote in non-Presidential elections.
And there are too many me-too “moderate” Democrats on the ballots in a significant proportion of the country.
The case the Republicans made to young voters in the last election was essentially
-we are going to spend all the money on unnecessary and endless wars that you will fight in
-we will not try to take care of your health, education or reentry into the job market when (if!) you ever come home from fighting our wars
-we will take away your pell grants and charge you higher interest rates on your student loans
– we will not invest in infrastructure or education or new technologies so you will not have any job prospects when you graduate
-no stinking birth control for you, you sluts
-no social security or medicare for you when you get older
-oh and we don’t like your “lifestyle choices”
-we want all the immigrants to self-deport
-we don’t like those food stamp collecting, mooching blahs
-we are very angry and like to look and sound angry at our large attendance (photoshopped) rallies.
Why on earth would young people vote for them?
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The “conservative” movement has been braindead for quite some time now, but reports of its demise seem greatly exaggerated. I’ll die waiting for organ failure in the “conservative” movement. And by definition, can zombies die?
What’s incredible is that while 3% of college student have seen through the insanity of low taxes for the rich, they give their votes to Repubs in massively higher numbers. There must be a large number of college kids out there who disagree with just about everything Repubs advocate, yet still vote for them. THOSE are the young ones Repubs need to do some lab studies on. Those kids must have developed some sort of anti-body to rational voting and immunity to cognitive dissonance—THEY hold the key to the braindead Repub future!
But it is usually the case in a fact-free, belief-driven ideological movement the youthful (mostly male) adherents are the most committed and zealous for the old “truth”. Al Qaeda, for instance. Here, incredibly, you have the youth wing of the American “conservative” movement wanting the Holy Truth watered down. Seems like High Priest Priebus needs to purge these young unbelievers and apostates, and pronto, that’s the only appropriate response to this heresy. Some advice, Young Repubs: Don’t ask, Don’t tell. Sieg Heil!! is all you need to know, and all you ever need.