The Young Flee the G.O.P.
David Leonhardt, Opinion at the NY Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/opinion/millenials-republicans-gop-donald-trump.html?_r=1
"SNIP...............
Ross Douthat has mentioned that Donald Trump may be a “disjunctive” president, much as Jimmy Carter was. A disjunctive president straddles political eras. He can often diagnose a core affliction in his political party, but can’t fully fix it — which means that his presidency ends up looking like a failed pause before a new era.
A fascinating series of polls from the Pew Research Center offers support for the Theory of Disjunction (originated by the political scientist Stephen Skowronek). After surveying Americans periodically over the 15 months since the 2016 campaign began, Pew has found that one demographic group has been much more likely than any other to switch its party identification: Republicans under the age of 30.
“Among those under 30 who initially identified as Republicans or leaned Republican in December 2015, 23% shifted to the Democratic Party,” Pew reported this week. The average switch rate for other groups was just above 10 percent. Not surprisingly, many of the people who stopped identifying as Republicans also held negative views about Trump.
These millenials are the flip side of Trump’s success in attracting white working-class voters who’d previously stayed home or voted Democratic. He has done so in part by aligning the Republican Party more closely with white nationalism, which played a role in his huge victory margins in older, less metropolitan America.
................SNIP"
= new reply since forum marked as read
