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Voting And Political Restrictions

Decent Essays

Voting is considered by many to be the most important civic opportunity given to American citizens. Voting trends can fluctuate from year to year; however there seem to be common tendencies in the data, which influence predictions in presidential races. I am investigating the effects age has on political affiliation. My assumption is that the older generations will tend to have more conservative political stance, whereas younger generations will tend to have a more liberal type approach. François Guizot, a French monarchist statesman stated long ago, “Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head”. This, in a way, aligns with my assumption that people are particularly susceptible to adopting …show more content…

While this information contributes to my study, it doesn’t clarify my assumption that the older someone gets, the more adjusted their political affiliation would be to the right. According to Laura Stoker, in her research paper “Reflections on the Study of Generations in Politics”, people’s opinions, attitudes, identities, and other predispositions, are most strongly developed during a period called the “impressionable years” which generally ranges from adolescence to adulthood. She also states that political engagement during these years tends to build habits, which are generally followed and remembered later in life. However, an investigation by Brown and Sears disagree with this theory and believe that people are always susceptible and open to change throughout any period of their life and that the major influence on political affiliation is linked to a particular life stage rather than a certain age. For example, the birth of a child could produce significant statistics in affiliation; however, women have babies at all ages from late teens to mid 30s. Stoker describes a concept known as Age-Period-Cohort Analysis, also known as the APC Framework, which is used to estimate how some attributes vary across generations, age, and through different periods. This leads to the study completed by Goujon, Kaufmann, and …show more content…

They created a panel, which uses estimates for the “age-specific weights along with 50% and 95% credible intervals. These weights reflect the formative years of political socialization and if presidential voting is a “running tally” reflecting the retrospective evaluations of past Democratic and Republican presidents, then these weights strongly indicate those evaluations are much more meaningful around the age of 18 rather than at a later point in life.” In Malcolm Grant’s study, a telephone survey was conducted in order to investigate whether age (as well as gender) played any role in political affiliation, and, like we have learned from the other researchers, there was a strong relationship between the two. In his study, Malcolm reached out to 200 men ranging from ages 18 to 79 as well as 179 women whose ages ranged from 18 to 86. The results indicated that conservatism did indeed increase with age, that liberalism was strongest in middle-aged women, and that radical liberalism was strongest in men but decreased with age. Francis Glasmer conducts a similar investigation into controversial issues exploring variables such as age, the size of the respondent’s childhood community, the respondent’s father’s education and occupation, as well as the respondent’s education level. This investigation included over 100 subjects whose ages

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