Millennial & Rational Voters

George Rebane

The well-respected Pew Research Center published a report on its recent survey of the political attitudes of the so-called millennial voters (young people who came of age in the first decade of this millennium).  Pew noted that “their attachment to the Democratic Party weakened markedly over the course of 2009”, although a majority of them still hew to the progressive talking points if not its deeper philosophy.  The noteworthy output from the survey was the “marked” reduction of those still enthralled with Team Obama.

What I found remarkable in Pew’s report was the large plurality (2/3) of Millennials who were successfully taken by Obama’s campaign message.  The results overall seem to corroborate the conclusion of the research reported by Bryan Caplan in his The Myth of the Rational Voter – Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.  I expanded on this theme in the 14may09 ‘Republicans Need a New Strategy’ post and elsewhere on RR.

Apparently many of these Obama supporters were also voting in their first election, being encouraged to do so by the various get-out-the-vote machinery (e.g. Acorn, SEIU) that Obama’s campaign so successfully marshaled in its behalf.  Caplan argued that the long accepted Principle of Aggregation, which gives more weight to the small number of knowledgeable voters, no longer holds.  He presented evidence that the well financed media campaigns directed at potential voters with little knowledge of the issues or history would today easily overwhelm the slim victory inducing margins of knowledgeable voters.  Today, the informationally short voters no longer split themselves more or less equally in their historically random voting patterns.  In short, as go the dummies, so goes the nation.

I think the Pew results, together with Caplan’s research, support the intuitive conclusions of most students of the American scene, especially those of the conservative-libertarian bent.  The bottom line is that our educational system’s much documented ideological biases and pedagogical shortcomings now influence the vote as never before.  It is in this light that we should all interpret the renewal of the intense fight over campaign financing that will hit its high notes this year.  Money matters more than the message.

Comments

[Account Deleted]

In short, as go the dummies, so goes the nation... Agreed! See my last post on Constructive Fraud. The Republic still stands (barely), it's the citizens that are the problem. Dem vs. Rep isn't the question. It's how many of the voters understand the tenets of the Declaration Of Independence and the Constitution? The Bee had a political cartoon the other day showing Uncle Sam telling the Rep elephant that if BO fails, so will the nation. Boy, did that ever show the problem. As long as we look for an elected official to save us and provide hope, we are finished.

[Dixon Cruickshank]

We saw some of the public school indoctraination first hand this year, of course its been going on but we just never saw, I guess this is the manifistation. Since they are inexperinced in life their choices I would think would be more idealogical, they don't understand budgets and deficts or entitlement programs yet. This is also a problem with a unionized monopoly in education - its like union indoctraination. 30/40 yrs ago people became teachers because they wanted to teach and the union didn't seem to be an issue.

On another quick note George: I struck me as ironic the Greeks had 2 mill workers striking, they are actually striking against themselves - there are only 11 mill in the whole country - take out seniors and kids, not much left. They all work for the Gov almost so they are the Gov - unions you gotta love'em