Not pictured: Americans under thirty.
This is worse news for the Republican Party than any other bad news they could be grumbling about, and it's not going to get any better while the party obsesses over racial and social-issue questions that the rest of the non-Fox-News country
has long since made up their minds about:
Young adults -- those between the ages of 18 and 29 -- have typically aligned themselves with the Democratic Party, but they have become substantially more likely to do so since 2006.
From 1993 to 2003, 47% of 18- to 29-year-olds, on average, identified as Democrats or said they were independents but leaned to the Democratic Party, while 42% were Republicans or Republican leaners. That time span included two years in which young adults tilted Republican, 1994 and 1995, when Republicans won control of Congress. Since 2006, the average gap in favor of the Democratic Party among young adults has been 18 percentage points, 54% to 36%.
That's a huge gap, and one of the reasons so many Republican "voter ID" efforts have made a special point over making it difficult for college students to vote; if you can't convince them with your policies, close the door in their faces and pray it all works out. (And younger adults are less likely to vote than their older counterparts in the first place, which continues to make Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts frustrating.)
Young whites first shifted to a pro-Democratic position in 2006, perhaps because of frustration with George W. Bush and his policies.
Hey look, somebody
does remember the crapfest that was the George W. Bush presidency. Maybe a few of them will become pundits, heaven knows they've got longer memories than the current crop.
So bad news, Republicans: Young Americans continue to largely despise you. This is a problem that even a foam-headed Uncle Sam wagging his finger at the notion that young people need health insurance may not be able to fix. Maybe two foam-headed Uncle Sams, then?