Attachment to either party is waning among younger voters. A plurality (41%) of them call themselves independents.
I swear this is a generational thing. Silent Gen were rebellious bastards, boomers were not, gen x are rebellious bastards, millennials are not, gen z going with being rebellious bastards totally checks out .
My old gen x ass is 100% with you my little dudes/dudettes... Gotta fight for your right to party ;)
Millennials are actually rebellious, too. Remaining liberal or further left as they age, rather than growing more conservative. Switching from their raised-in religion to "None." The rates are less sharp than Gen Z, but they are still significant.
The old tick-tock analogy is changing, especially as an alarming number of people are trying to thumb the scales hard to the right.
An I'm a 1980 kid... So gen x or millennial or Oregon trail gen or what ever you want to call it..
I'm in the south.. so red a Democrat doesn't even run majority of the time..
I have done nothing but move further left as I've gotten older.
Started out paying attention to politics when I was 16 and those "demoncrats" were going to ruin the nation... Then I realized all they really wanted to do was enable anyone to get married, have legal weed, make sure my retired parents have health care and not to mention make sure kids don't go into debt for school lunches..
One side wants to hate drag queens / kill gay or transgender folks/ force women to bear any dependant they are inflicted with
And the other wants gram gram to get her insulin for $35 / let folks be free to choose
Ironically, the current trend is Gen Z cis men are becoming more conservative, Gen Z women are fairly liberal, and Millenials across the board are generally becoming more liberal as they age.
Can you find that study? Because I remember a headline claiming that a while ago, but was an editor misrepresenting the data to make clickbait. In that case, men of Gen Z overall were still more liberal even than Millennials.
Here's an article covering such a topic. There's a plot of Partisan Identity further down, and the only data point that supports the conclusion that they're "getting conservative" is white Gen Z teens. Every other group is decidedly Democrat or Independent.
The next one shows political ideology, and even in that breakdown, while conservative beats liberal overall, both are significantly behind moderate (and depending on how the question was framed, you can be a social conservative and still a liberal voter).
Basically, Gen Z teens (13-17yos) are becoming more conservative, but that's making them moderates, not conservatives. Additionally, I don't put much stock in teenage paradigms; they don't have a lot of life experience, and facing unrelenting reality has a way of putting people's sheltered upbringings in check.
Ultimately, I agree with the author's final sentiment: only time will tell if these particular trends mean anything.
It's about a global trend, not just the US. This Buzzfeed piece has a decent breakdown of it, since the originals are largely paywalled. I agree as well, it's way too early to tell what the generation will be like.
I'm a millennial and I'd identify as an independent because I fucking hate the DNC... but there's no fucking chance Trump will get my vote and a 100% chance whoever has the D (probably Biden, let's be real) will get my vote. In my mayoral election I'm carefully researching both the dem and progressive candidates though.
It's going to be interesting to see how the young rural population revolts. I think we'll see the greatest amount of change coming from small rural areas. They'll have to create their own agenda, nobody has any answers for them.