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And while that evolution is by no means complete, it largely helps us understand how presidential elections and American politics more broadly are evolving.
The discussion was sparked by new data from the Pew Research Center that examined partisan identity among demographic groups. But don’t start by jumping into party identification between young and old, or between men and women. Instead, let’s look at a less common metric: housing.
According to Pew data, homeowners are slightly more likely to identify as Republicans (or Republican-leaning independents) than Democrats. The difference is 6 points, with 51% of homeowners identifying as Republican or Republican-leaning. But among renters, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have a two-to-one advantage. The difference in partisanship between homeowners and renters totals 38 points. Homeowners have a plus 6 point vote for Republicans, and renters have a plus 32 point vote for Democrats.
When presented with this data, it probably didn’t take long for you to start thinking about groups that fit into these two categories. Almost by definition, homeowners are generally better off than renters. But they are also generally older. These numbers likely reflect other characteristics rather than how strongly homeowners support Republican policy positions.
When examining data like Pew, it is very important to consider this overlap in characteristics. For example, Pew data shows that Asian, Black, and Hispanic Americans identify more strongly as Democrats than Republicans. The shifts to the right seen in other data sets like Gallup are not as robustly reflected in Pew’s data set. However, this is likely due in part to the Pew dataset’s focus on registered voters.
But that racial identity also overlaps with age. Younger Americans are more likely to be nonwhite than older Americans. So when we look at Pew’s partisanship by age, young voters’ tendency to identify as a Democrat or Democratic-leaning independent overlaps with voters who are more likely to be non-white. Please consider that.
It’s also worth noting that younger voters are more likely to fall into that “thin” category, as shown in Pew’s data. That is, they are more likely to be independents who are more likely to vote Democratic than older Americans.
Perhaps this is one reason why President Biden’s polling numbers with young Americans aren’t as strong (especially compared to past years). They are less loyal to the party organization and consider Biden more of a (less popular) candidate.
Another feature that overlaps with age at the center of Pew’s data is education.
Pew has studied the composition of the two major political parties over the decades, allowing us to see how each party has changed. Although political parties are becoming more diverse, Republicans are still more white than Democrats were 28 years ago. Political parties are aging, and that’s especially true for the Republican Party, which has more support among older Americans. And while each party now has more members with college degrees, this is even more true for the Democratic Party.
why? Part of the reason is that younger Americans are more likely to earn a college degree.
Even before Donald Trump entered the political scene, it had been observed that education had become significantly polarized in recent years. Americans without a college degree were 14 points more Democratic in 2007, but last year they were 6 points more Republican. The change is even more dramatic among whites without a college degree, who lean 30 points more toward Republicans.
On the other hand, among those with a degree, the support rate for Republicans went from 10 points in 2002 to 20 points in 2018, and dropped to 13 points last year. College-educated whites turned to Republicans again, but not as dramatically, and they still lean Democratic online.
Interestingly, the difference between those with and without a college degree is much larger for whites than for blacks or Hispanic Americans. This may also be because Pew only looks at registered voters, but it is still true that the differences are not reflected within other groups. Pew found that among black Americans, those with a college degree have slightly lower social status. right A black American without a degree.
Pew also found that the partisan divide by education was more pronounced among wealthy Americans than among poor Americans. The poorest Americans without a degree lean more Democratic than Republican and are not that different from those with a degree at their income level. The wealthiest Americans without a degree (a much older group since older Americans are more likely to have higher incomes and less likely to have a degree) have the largest partisan gap by education. Ta.
The Pew data also show that partisan identity disparities in rural communities are widening, although not the relative stability of suburban communities or urban centers.
There is some overlap here too. Rural communities tend to be older, whiter, and less college-educated than their urban counterparts. (On average, as of 2019, rural counties had one-fifth of the population over 65, one-fifth with a college degree, and three-quarters of white people. Rural counties had about one-fifth of the population who were white. 1 were over 65 years old, 40% had some college education, and just under half were white). )
Granted, these numbers can be sliced several ways. One approach is to use age as a proxy for these underlying patterns. But it’s also useful because we have two large generational groups competing for power: baby boomers and millennials, and each group has characteristics that overlap with politics.
One story in Pew’s data is that while the focus is understandably on partisanship among Black and Hispanic Americans, broader trends such as education remain, which makes this very strange It is measurable and useful for understanding the political moment.
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