Follow BeltwayBlips on Twitter
Losing the Youth Vote
Ross Douthat —
Patrick Ruffini has the grisly details. Greg Mankiw ventures a conjecture: Why? I am not enough of a political scientist to be sure, but recent
conversations I have had with some Harvard undergrads have led me to a
conjecture: It was largely noneconomic issues. These particular
students told me they preferred the lower tax, more limited government,
freer trade views of McCain, but they were voting for Obama on the
basis of foreign policy and especially social issues like abortion. The
choice of a social conservative like Palin as veep really turned them
off McCain. So what does the Republican Party need to do to get
the ...
Kids These Days
Weekly Standard Blog —
Patrick Ruffini on the youth vote:
People have been focusing on whether the youth vote was up. It was -- slightly: going from 17 to 18 percent. But the real story about the youth vote is not how many "new" voters Obama got to show up. It's how he produced a gargantuan 25% swing among existing young voters, or those who were sure to vote for the first time anyway.
How big?
18 percent times a 25 percent increase in the Democratic margin equals 4.5 points, or a majority of Obama's popular vote margin. Had the Democratic 18-29 vote stayed the same as 2004's already impressive percentage, Obama would have won by about 2 ...
Ruffini's Warning
The Atlantic Politics Channel —
Republican strategist Patrick Ruffini believes that swings within the young voter demographic can account for Obama's victory -- and he's worried. People have been focusing on whether the youth vote was up. It was
-- slightly: going from 17 to 18 percent. But the real story about the
youth vote is not how many "new" voters Obama got to show up. It's how
he produced a gargantuan 25% swing among existing young voters, or those who were sure to vote for the first time anyway. How big?18 percent times a 25 percent increase in the Democratic margin equals 4.5 points, or a majority of Obama's popular vote ...
Losing And Losing And Losing The Youth Vote
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan —
Patrick Ruffini sounds the alarm. The GOP won't have a future until it appeals to young voters again. Bush turned an entire generation blue. Obama merely mobilized it.
The blue map
Hot Air » Top Picks —
The blue map posted at 4:18 pm on November 6, 2008 by Allahpundit Send to a Friend | printer-friendly From the Times, an interactive snapshot of voter trends county by county. Blue means the district went more Democratic than it did in 2004, not that Obama won it; for a breakdown on that, choose “County leaders” at the link (or, better yet, “County bubbles” to weight each district by population). Aside from Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and a few scattered blotches in the south, the trend was universal. Discounting McCain’s home state, I spy exactly two counties west of Texas that went heavier for Maverick than they did for Bush. ...
Over-reading The Tea Leaves
Riehl World View —
You may catch a conversation going on around the blogs about the Youth Vote.
here more here
Make of it what you want. Obama got a slightly larger segment of the Youth vote out. That isn't to be ignored.
But pointing out that they appear to be more liberal (I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you!) as a rationale to significantly change a small government, solid values party is a load of bunk, seen by people who want to see it for their own reasons.
What happens when they get older, start earning a paycheck and paying taxes and raising families and, consequently, become more conservative?
Change, again?
That ...
Uh, don’t forget the war, guys…
Sadly, No! —
Ross Douthat, Patrick Ruffini, Greg Mankiw and David Frum all ponder why so many of the young’uns (which technically still includes me, even though I’m at the very edge of the 18-29 crowd) voted for Barack Obama. Frum and Mankiw blame the social cons, while Douthat says that economic concerns were far more of a factor. Ruffini seems to think that young people are just stupid and should probably be prevented from voting all together, though I can’t really tell.
Here’s something none of them mentioned: our current foreign policy of starting wars for no reason.
I’ll put it to you like ...
Arianna Huffington: Tuesday's Second Biggest Winner: Democracy
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
Along with Barack Obama (and the other winners I've written about), there was another big winner on election day: democracy.
Based on initial numbers, it looks like over 133 million people turned out to vote on Tuesday -- 11 million more than voted in 2004 - producing the highest turnout rate in 44 years (62.5 percent). By way of comparison, the turnout rate in 1996 was just over 49 percent (that's right, less than half of those eligible to vote bothered to show up).
One of the most noteworthy trends was the makeup of the electorate.
In 2000, whites accounted for 81 percent of all voters. This year, that ...
Generation Obama
The Moderate Voice —
The day after the election, I received an e-mail from my father: “Congratulations to you and your generation. The torch has been passed.”
Obviously he didn’t mean in terms in governance. Although a torch has been passed in that sense, my generation wasn’t the recipient; I’m 26, and Obama is closer to a Baby Boomer than a Millennial (or Generation Y, or whatever we’re supposed to be called). But for all the election of the first African-American symbolized, it also represented perhaps the first collective defining action of an entire generation of young voters who brought about this change, and the political ...
"Today there is a categorical difference between what Republicans stand for and the principles of individual freedom"
Hit & Run —
So sayeth Dick Armey, former Gingrich revolutionary and House majority leader from 1995-02. Armey, who now heads up Freedom Works, has uncharitable things to say about the last eight years of Republicanism: Too often the policy agenda was determined by short-sighted political considerations and an abiding fear that the public simply would not understand limited government and expanded individual freedoms. How else do we explain "compassionate conservatism," No Child Left Behind, the Medicare drug benefit and the most dramatic growth in federal spending since LBJ's Great Society? [...] The response by Mr. McCain to ...
Michael Hais and Morley Winograd: It's Official: Millennials Realigned American Politics in 2008
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
The 2008 election not only marked the election of America's first African-American president, it also saw the strong and clear political emergence of a new, large and dynamic generation and the realignment of American politics for the next 40 years.
The first large wave of the Millennial Generation, about one third of the young Americans born from 1982-2003, entered the electorate to decisively support President-elect Barack Obama. Young voters preferred Obama over John McCain by a greater than 2:1 margin (66% vs. 32%). This is well above the margin given by young voters to any presidential candidate for at least three decades, if not at any ...
If Saxby Wins by 5+ Turnout Mattered on 11/4
The Next Right —
The latest Public Policy Polling (D) poll out of Georgia has Saxby Chambliss up by 7 points -- 53-46 (that's not a lot of undecideds). And reading FiveThirtyEight, it's not hard to see why:
Whatever turns out to be the case, at the close of early voting Wednesday, according to the Secretary of State's office 345,564 had voted, and 22.5% of those votes were African-American, an ominous dropoff from the 34.5% of black early voters for the general election.
If Saxby does manage to significantly expand from his 3 point lead on November 4th, we can start writing the story of how the African American and ...
Prepare for a Blowout
Patrick Ruffini —
I am a strong proponent of the idea that candidate recruitment is the ultimate futures market of elections. Collectively, the decisions made by candidates on both sides tell a lot about where politicos on the ground see the political environment headed in the next year to 18 months. It was not surprising that in 2006 and especially in 2008, candidate recruitment on our side sucked wind. Only one Senate race -- Louisiana -- was even remotely considered a Republican pickup opportunity in '08.
For 2010, the story is different. We are by and large getting our top-tier recruits in Senate races, and in more and more House races. And the White House ...
Why a 2010 Blowout Will Not Mean Things Are Better
The Next Right —
After the 2002 and 2004 elections, Republicans celebrated electoral victories that many thought would put them in the position to maintain a long-term majority. In turn, Democrats pushed the panic button and began looking for ways to turn things around. Likewise, after 2006 and 2008, it was the opposite effect, with Democrats claiming a permanent majority, and Republicans looking to rebuild.
Once again, the political climate seems to be changing, this time in favor of Republicans. President Obama’s approval ratings are continuing to trend significantly downward, with the latest Rasmussen Poll even suggesting that the ...
