Pew Research released a new survey yesterday titled "Gen Dems: The Party's Advantage Among Young Voters Widens," outlining a growing Democratic advantage with younger voters (age 18-29) in party identification. The report argues the shift in allegiance foreshadows even greater Democratic Party strength in the future. According to Pew:
Trends in the opinions of America's youngest voters are often a barometer of shifting political winds. And that appears to be the case in 2008. The current generation of young voters, who came of age during the George W. Bush years, is leading the way in giving the Democrats a wide advantage in party identification, just as the previous generation of young people who grew up in the Reagan years--Generation X--fueled the Republican surge of the mid-1990's.
The report shows a 58%-33% Democratic advantage in party preference for young Americans 18-29 in March of 2008. This compares to a smaller 49%-41% lead in 2000 and parity (46%-47%) in 1992.
These numbers underscore the Republican Party's "brand" problem and are no doubt driven by President Bush's low popularity numbers among those in this age cohort.
But a couple of caveats are also in order. First, I'm not sure that the numbers foretell a political realignment or an enduring sea change in public opinion. Party identification numbers in general are notoriously volatile. Those with weaker attachments to one party or the other often move back and forth between independent and "lean partisan" categories over time, shifting the numbers in significant ways.
Second, I looked back at some even earlier surveys to put the Pew research in a little broader perspective. First, in 1972, the same year Richard Nixon won a landslide reelection, Democrats held a 51%-29% advantage in party identification of Americans under 30 according to the American National Election Studies (ANES) at the University of Michigan. Eight years later, when Ronald Reagan was first elected, the ANES poll shows a 50%-26% Democratic edge in party ID among younger adults. So maybe the current Pew figures are just reverting back to historical norms--a circumstance that didn't seem to hurt Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan's electoral fortunes.
Republicans would obviously prefer higher numbers from the under 30 crowd, but partisan attachments are largely driven by short-term political circumstances, and sometimes less determinative of election outcomes than you might think.
