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
Family is the first and most important agent of political socialization. Mothers and fathers, or legal guardians, siblings and grandparents, as well as members of an extended family, all teach a child what he or she needs to know in order to function successfully within society including the political process. The family is a powerful influence because the structure of the family and the child wanting to please his or her parents encourage conformity not only to the parents ' basic life views and beliefs but also to their political values. In particular, children will often identify with the parents ' political party while those who don’t register usually support some of the views of the party which their parents favored or have no interest in politics typically because their parents didn’t show interest in politics. I
Since 1972, youth voter turnout has been on the decline. According to the Child Trends Databank, 50 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 participated in the 1972 presidential election (2015). Nearly three decades later, the percentage of young adults aged 18 to 24 who voted in the 2000 presidential election had dropped eighteen
Now why does this kind of age discrimination affect voter turnout among young people? In the first place, it is clear that a sense of disenfranchisement with the political system develops when citizens cannot identify with their representatives. Part of the reason why white people over 45 vote more often is that most candidates for political office are white and over 45. Idealistic political philosophy often maintains that any citizen ought to be able to
As society rapidly changes with an influx of new ideas and issues, studying the college educated and those who are not will help evaluate behaviors and attitudes towards the government, ultimately, clearing the way to adaption into a modern society that perhaps offer remedies of educational and voting discrepancies or even close the gaps between political ideology or identification. Hence, this paper proposes the research question: How does education level influence political party identification.
I believe that before the presidential election of 2008 the group of people who would most likely vote is people ranging from 30 to 65 years old. The reason is people usually around 30 to 65 years old are in a stage of their life where they’ve established their homes, probably have a stable job, and settled in their communities. So, those who usually come from a stable community roots are more likely to have reason and greater resources to becoming involved in politics and to vote. However, over the recent years younger generations are starting to vote because of mobilization through social media. This new technology allows candidates to really engage the younger people by websites like Facebook which will help them become informed on polls,
After taking the quiz I have come to the conclusion that I lean more towards the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. My best fit according to the quiz was that I am a Young Outsider. According to the quiz, Young Outsiders generally express unfavorable opinions of both major parties and are largely skeptical of activist government, as a majority views government as wasteful and inefficient. Also, many Young Outsiders come from the two conservative typology groups Steadfast Conservatives and Business Conservatives in their support for the environment and many liberal social policies according to the quiz. I agree with the label of a Young Outsider to an extent because I think that I do lean more towards the Republican Party, but there are also views that I have which are unfavorable of both parties. When taking this quiz, I did realize that I share mixed views from both parties, but it only helped to confirm my speculation that I was not really one side or the other.
Several previous polls have proven that younger voters tend to vote dramatically less than older voters. The article also sudgests we allow 16 year old voters to take voting impact away from that of much older voters. When in reality the older voters have much more life experience and could make a better, more well founded decision than that of a 16 year
There are currently six living generations in the United States, each with different characteristics, beliefs, and values. The things that define each generation’s culture are derived from their history, upbringing, and the lifestyle of their time. Our generation was born between 1980 and 2000. We are called Millennials. More specifically, we grew up in the South, which typically lends itself to being more conservative and religious. These characteristics, along with our instant gratification attitude, define who we are, what we believe, and how we view other generations. For example, we might have differing views with the Silent Generation. Some Millennials may feel the Silent Generation’s social, religious, and economic conservatism is outdated.
From 1972 to 2004, Abramowitz points out that the correlation between ideology and party identification rose from .32 to .63 showing an increase over time from a more moderate stance to a more polarized one in the engaged electorate. In the 1984 to 2004 ANES, the least interested and least informed Americans were shown to be in the middle of the liberal-conservative spectrum, while the more informed and active constituents were more likely to be more polarized. From the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) data, Abramowitz states that even Independents leaned more liberal or conservative than weak Democrats or weak Republicans respectively. Again, nonvoters made up forty-one percent of the center of the distribution affirming that only the nonvoters are non-ideological and non-polarized. In regards to social groups, Abramowitz concluded that religious commitment mattered more than social status, but overall, voter’s ideological beliefs made a greater impact on party loyalty than being part of any social
For example, Abramowitz uses the Converse study to show that education was a strong predictor of ideological sophistication. This is important to note, because as Abramowitz mentions on page 35, from 1956-2004 the percentage of respondents that took place in the ANES survey with only a grade school education went from 37% all the way down to 3%. Furthermore, participants with at least some college experience went from 19% to 61%. Using this information, Abramowitz directly refutes Fiorina’s claim that little has changed in the American public since the 1950’s. Fiorina believes that even 21st Century Americans are still not very well informed about politics, along with not holding views very strongly and are not ideological. This is at odds with Abramowitz’s view. Abramowitz concedes that among the politically disengaged, Fiorina’s argument does make some sense, however, when referring to the politically engaged his argument does not hold up. It is important to remember too, as Abramowitz points out, the politically engaged is not just some small fringe group, they are actually a substantial group of the American
The research will examine voting rights in relation to voting right inequalities and the society’s effort to have an all minority groups included in the civic process. The research will look into several historical factors that contributed to voting rights inequalities and how the society has evolved to solve issues related to the right to vote.
Conservatives receive an increasing percentage of votes in correlation with age and Lib Dem and Labour have high performance among the younger groups. The writer G.B. Shaw once wrote that, 'If you are not a socialist by the time you are 25, you have no heart. If you are not a Conservative by the time you are 35, you have no head'. There is the entrenched view that young people are more liberal whilst as individuals grow older they become more set in their ways, more wedded to traditional values and attitudes and more likely to believe that Conservative governments are more likely to safeguard their financial and personal security which appear increasingly important in later life. Considering this, surprisingly in the 2010 general election, the ages of 18-24 voted fairly equally between the three main parties with the age bias gap only really becoming apparent from the age 55 onwards. This shows that younger prejudices and party alignment are not as ingrained as that of the elderly meaning that old people may be influenced in their voting behaviour by their age but the same is not as apparent for young people, despite the surface recognition that it is. Yet the implication of young people sharing their votes between parties could be due to other factors, when
According to the American National Election Study in 1990, older people are more likely to follow the news daily. More elderly than any other age groups are reported reading a daily newspaper and watching the news on television every day during the previous week. Not only do older people pay close attention to politics, they also vote more than younger adults. According to the American Association of Retired Persons, people over 65 exhibit the highest rate of voter turnout of any age group. Since the mid- to late-1980s, voter turnout in national elections has been even higher among those 65 and over. Combined with the growing proportion of older people in the U.S. population, this high turnout rate makes the elderly an increasingly important group of voters.
In our world, there are many social issues to discuss about that affect the way we live our lives. One particular issue that’s significant is the voter turnout of young people during the 2014 mid-term election. So my question is why do young people not vote as much as the old? Well I checked my sources and I discovered some intriguing facts. During the mid-term election, voter turnout was the worst ever since World War 2. It was rather disappointing and pathetic for the youth of America. People between the ages of 18-29 represented only 13 percent of the votes. On the other hand, the old were much better as people between 45-64 represented about 43 percent. Another interesting statistic is that
Having obtained the age of 79, Mr. Trail, spends his days contemplating the planting of his tomatoes and chasing away the rabbits. We began to talk about the politics of the day and what he saw as the outcome in November. Mr. Trail expressed that he would most assuredly vote in the coming presidential election and that in the past he mostly voted in local and state elections because he thought the presidential election outcome was pretty much known already. With retirement, Don had the time to sit down and read the newspaper. He began to take interest in local, national and federal politics, especially when decisions were going to affect his Social Security and taxes he would pay, therefore, he began to exercise his right to vote. The Pew Research Center has a study that the age group of 18-49 has a voting percentage of 55% compared to the 50 and over of 83% (Who Votes, Who Doesn’t and Why).