Gallup Shows Why GOP Needs To Appeal To Gen Y
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Polls, RepublicansI make my living in the marketing world, and the one thing that very successful brands always make sure to do is LISTEN to their customers and remain flexible. Because, over time, tastes change and you have to change with them or you can quickly become irrelevant. And between the car companies and the newspapers we’ve seen first hand what happens when businesses are inflexible and not forward thinking.
Well GOP…you need to WAKE UP because you are about to lose an entire generation of voters.
And here’s a closer look at exactly how big the spread is when you look at specific ages…
Yikes.
I’ve heard many Republicans claim that we’re a center right nation and that voters get more conservative with age. Well, it looks like party ID has a lot more to do with who the President was when you started voting than anything else. Because if the “more conservative with age” theory were correct, we’d see descending graphs here, right?
Also, the fact that Dems have a 14+ point advantage over Republicans with Gen Y is CRAZY. I don’t remember any party having such a massive lead and look for that advantage to grow if Obama gets two terms and leaves the country in better shape then he found it…which is VERY likely.
This is why the GOP shouldn’t listen to folks like Mike Huckabee right now. Because he’s just plain wrong. Socially conservative policy can not unite the country, but fiscally conservative policy can. That should be the GOP’s bread and butter and it’ll be the only way they can win the Gen Yers back.
Oh, and you better have a plan for Generation Z too.
I’m just saying…
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May 9th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I completely agree. I think that in terms of fiscal policy the GOP has to get more conservative, which, even though people call Bush “conservative,” he was not successful at fiscal conservatism. That’s why they need to distance the party from the Bush administration. As for social policy, the GOP shouldn’t necessarily become more liberal, but just put it on the backburner and deemphasize it for the time being. I think that the new chairman Michael Steele will be very successful at these goals.
May 9th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Bush and successful shouldn’t be in the same paragraph.
Being part of gen Y, I would love to have a party that actually fit my and what i think of as our ideals – which is socially liberal, financially conservative, and a champion of individual rights, and not just those rights that involve guns.
May 9th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
I definitely agree that the Republicans have a problem with the younger generation, and also you’re right that the graph does contradict the argument that people become more conservative with age, and also you are right that the Republicans need to adapt, and they are to some extent. (Whether they are doing so fast enough is debatable).
However, I think the graph is somewhat misleading because it does not account for the varying number of people in each age group, which is important if we are to use the graph to predict how political views will be balanced in the future. See http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/STTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=ACS_2007_3YR_G00_S0101&-ds_name=ACS_2007_3YR_G00_. Based on those numbers, you could argue that the views of the group over 65 or so are not very relevant, since there aren’t very many of them. That means that as those between 50 and 65 keep aging, they will have less of an impact, which according to the graph is good for the GOP, as long as they can win some of the next generation, which brings me to my next point…
I think it’s pretty clear that a large reason that so many younger people consider themselves Democrats is because of Bush. Even if the Republicans don’t ever win over generation Y, now that Bush is gone, the Democrats won’t have that kind of freebie with the next generation who are too young to have experienced Bush first-hand. So while what happens with generation Z is certainly up in the air, the Republicans could certainly benefit if they play their cards right, especially if Obama does not live up to expectations.
So, while I agree with your over-all point, the graph does show some silver-lining for Republicans.
May 10th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Justin, don’t confuse changing the message with changing how the message is marketed. Obama didn’t propose anything new, but it was wrapped up in a shiny new package with all the social media trimmings.
May 10th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Gallup’s poll is missing an important part of the equation: Generation Jones, born 1954-1965, between the Boomers and Generation X. Google Generation Jones, and you’ll see it’s gotten a lot of media attention, and many top commentators from many top publications and networks (Washington Post, Time magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) now specifically use this term.
Unlike pollsters who are up with current generational trends, Gallup is still using old school generational delineations. By lumping part of GenJones with Boomers, and part with GenX, Gallup’s generational data is seriously flawed. Several top pollsters—including Mason-Dixon and Rasmussen— have shown that GenJones’ political behavior and voting patterns are clearly distinct from its surrounding generations.
It is important to distinguish between the post-WWII demographic boom in births vs. the cultural generations born during that era. Generations are a function of the common formative experiences of its members, not the fertility rates of its parents. Many experts now believe it breaks down this way:
DEMOGRAPHIC boom in babies: 1946-1964
Baby Boom GENERATION: 1942-1953
Generation Jones: 1954-1965
Generation X: 1966-1978
Here is a relatively recent op-ed in USA TODAY about GenJones as the new generation of leadership:
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090127/column27_st.art.htm
May 11th, 2009 at 9:00 am
hedb
Thanks for the link. Interesting reading.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Exiled…some of it is marketing and some of it is the message itself. GOP have problems with both apparently.
May 11th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I’ve been pointing this out for awhile, but no one seems to hear. As a member of the Boomer/Jones generation, I saw the tectonic shift in 1980 which tilted from left to right. That came after 40 years of Democratic occupation. People were sick of Democrats. Now, young people are sick of Republicans in much the same way after almost 40 years of conservative agenda. Not much the GOP can do about it, since all of their policies are heavily-weighted toward those who already have theirs.
http://www.politicalpragmatist.com