Millennial and Conservative

It could be the economy, but I suspect that is only true in the fact that the current economy is keeping many of them under Mom and Dad’s roof longer. As an older Millennial myself, I would have classified myself as a conservative too at that age. These days I am hardly the card carrying conservative my parents would like me to be. A lot of changes occur in those ten years, such as higher education, moving out, getting a full time job for the first time, getting married, and having children.

It’s a whole different ball game when you aren’t being fully supported (funded) by the wealthiest generation.

Scot, I think the Millennials parallel the Boomer generation in this regard. By some accounts the leading edge Boomers (born 1946-1954) were more a product of the heady days of protest and anti-establishment activism in the 1960s and 1970s. The trailing edge Boomers (1955-1964), sometimes called Generation Jones, came of age in the middle economic turmoil (1973-1982), the end of the failed Vietnam War, a president resigning from office, Iran Hostage crisis, Three-Mile Island, and a host of other calamities. I was born 1959 and graduated from college 1981, in the middle of the worst post WWII recession until this recession. Studies indicate that my cohort become considerably more pragmatic and less idealistic than older boomers, though still sharing some framing of issues in common with them. I’m the youngest of four and I see anecdotal evidence as I look at my older siblings and myself.

The youngest Millennials have now been enduring four years of the worst economy in a couple of generations, and are just now trying move out on their own. I suspect they are having formative experiences similar to Generation Jones.

Another possibility: who was president during the formative years of most older millenials: pretty much Bush, with vague memories of Clinton. Very young millenials (18-19), have not had a negative experience with a conservative during years when they would have been particularly politically informed.

In fact, I believe these particular youth numbers for 18-19 year olds mirror the numbers of Americans in general, which may mean that in the absence of a universally-acknowledged bad president (Bush), and in an atmosphere where one’s political persuasion seems to absolutely determine one’s evaluation of Obama’s performance, 18-19 year old emerging adults are still reporting political preferences that basically were passed down from their parents.

In short, older millenials broke with their conservative parents a few years back because of a particularly bad conservative president, and younger millenials are staying with their parents because Obama is just competent enough to prevent liberal kids from breaking with their parents, and yet not viewed positively enough to pull any conservative kids away like he did back in 2008.

My experiences with young adults this age indicates that they are about as fiscally and politically conservative (or liberal) as their parents for the most part, though exceptions do happen. They are unquestioningly more socially liberal (perhaps with the exception of abortion; I think some studies have shown them to be slightly more conservative in this regard).

Most people I know move around politically in their early-mid 20′s; this would fit in with much of the emerging adult developmental stuff that is going around.

I echo Michael Kruse in #5. I seldom comment here, but I check Jesus Creed almost daily. For what it may or may not be worth, I think Scot does a fine job of posting things from both liberal and conservative political pundits. It’s one of the places in the blogosphere where a good and substantive and civil discussion is possible.