Harry J Enten: On polling and politics

Has the Republican party lost young voters for good?

In 2012, millennials broke strongly for Obama. But Democrats cannot assume they've got the youth vote locked up indefinitely
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Obama Visits VA High School, Discusses Student Loans
President Barack Obama addressing students at Washington-Lee High School, 4 May 2012 in Arlington, Virginia. Photograph: Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

Republican operatives all over the country are scrambling to figure out what's wrong with the Republican party. Most have centered on analyzing the political leanings of millennials because they are a growing bloc, and because, for the past two elections, President Obama has won 60% or more of voters between the ages of 18 and 29.

The most common diagnosis is that Republicans are just too conservative for young voters. But I wouldn't worry about, if I were a Republican …

1. Elections are still about the economy

Last week, I wrote about how President Obama was the economic favorite in the 2012 election. The economy was moving forward, albeit slowly. The economic situation was very similar to the 2004 election.

We can see this in the leading economic indicators (encompassing 10 economic variables) model of Bob Erikson and Chris Wlezien. It pointed to a 5pt Obama victory, slightly better than he actually did. The same model (without trial heat polls) gave Bush a 5.5pt edge (pdf) in 2004, slightly better than he did. Obviously, there is some error here in how the model performed, but that is to be expected without actually using polling.

The key takeaway is that an overarching measure of the economy forecasted the final result in both election years, even if the media argued the economy was in worse shape. The funny thing is that in both 2004 and 2012, Erikson and Wlezien noted in their write-ups before the election that the strength of the economy "may surprise" given what was being said about the state of the economy in the press.

The good news for Republicans is economies go up and they go down. If the economy turns south by 2016, as it did for 2008, the Republicans are going to start doing better again in the race for the White House. My friend Jamelle Bouie illustrated this point well in a column last week.

2. Ideology is overrated as a factor in presidential campaigns

Most smart analysts recognize that while Republicans hold deficits on who is trusted on many issues, that hasn't stopped them from winning before. More voters approved of the Democratic party than the GOP in the 2010 election, yet Republicans won the House vote by 6.6pt.

In fact, the ideology of a presidential candidate makes only the slightest bit of difference. The generally accepted percentage among most academic literature is 1-2pt, from most extreme to most moderate. President Obama won by nearly 4pt.

Moreover, Mitt Romney, by almost any measure, was the second most moderate candidate next to Jon Huntsman in the Republican field. Romney was about as conservative as George W Bush in 2000. A more moderate candidate would have likely made little difference in 2012.

3. The GOP issue isn't the youth – it's everyone

Mitt Romney did worse across pretty much all age cohorts compared to President Bush in 2004.

Bush only won 43% of the 18-24 year-old cohort. There wasn't much of an outcry about Bush's young voter problem because he won. Two elections later, Romney won about 40% of the now 26-32 year-olds. This 3pt drop was entirely consistent with a national Republican drop of 3.5pt from Bush's 50.7% to Romney's 47.2%.

Other age groups are consistent with that effect. Bush won 53% of the then 30-44 year-old vote. This time, Romney nabbed 50% of the now 40-49 year-old cohort, which again matches the Republican drop of 3pt nationally. Same with the then 40-49 year-old vote, where Bush grabbed 54% and Romney walked away with 52% of the now 50-64 year-old cohort.

None of this is too surprising. As I wrote last week, age cohorts tend to remain at the same level of partisanship relative to the mean. A cohort's "liberalism" or "conservatism" is dependent on the success of the presidential administration they come of age under. The now 26-32 year-olds came of age during the not too successful Bush administration and pretty solid Clinton years.

The factor, as discussed above, that moved all these groups slightly to the left is the economy.

4. The next generation of new voters will probably be more Republican-inclined than this one

Very well, you might say, but what about the addition of voters who turned 18 since 2004? Surely, they have tilted the electorate. Yet, the now 18-25 year-olds mostly took over for the 75-plus year-olds in 2004, who were very Democratic. That's why age cohorts who cast a ballot in 2004 and 2012 voted the same relative to national vote, even as more millennials have turned 18.

Of course, a steady parade of Democratic millennials could make hell for the Republican party. They will be replacing the 60-74 year-olds of 2004 and now 68-82 year-olds, who have been 6-8pt more Republican than the nation as whole.

The good news for Republicans is that the new 13-18 year-olds don't seem to be like today's 18-32 year-old voters. As I noted last week, the men and women college freshmen of 2012 were 4-5pt less liberal than those of 2008, which brings them closer to middle-of-the-road freshmen of the beginning of the Carter and Clinton administrations.

High school students can't vote yet, but scientific polling on them can be predictive. In 2004, 13-17 year-olds would have voted for John Kerry in the same numbers as those 18-24 per Gallup/Knowledge Networks. That translated into a huge win for Obama among 18-24 year-olds in 2008. In 2008, Harris Interactive found that those under 18 would have voted in a similar manner to their older co-millennials. And that, too, translated into a huge Obama win among 18-24 year-olds in 2012.

In 2012, high school students seem to be far more conservative. The margin among high school students in an American University/GfK poll between Obama-Romney was 20pt closer than among all college students, who as a group voted in the same fashion as all 18-29 year-olds. These high school students were also far more likely to be against abortion than their college counterparts.

The more limited liberalism of these 13-18 year-olds has, again, to do with youth responding to the president they grew up under. President Obama's administration has been, by historical standards, middlingly successful – as can be seen in his projected historical ranking, so the voters who grew up under him are more oriented to the middle ground of politics, too.


None of this is to say that Republicans shouldn't make changes. They should invest in better get-out-the-vote efforts. President Obama's team clearly dominated the get-out-the-vote campaign in 2012, which may very well have won him the key state of Florida.

You'd also rather be the better-liked party. In an election where the fundamentals don't favor either side, it could make the difference.

Yet, both of these examples are the exceptions that prove the point: ideological or infrastructural changes will really only matter in 1pt- or 2pt-margin elections, not 4pt ones. Republican losses in 2012 had little to do with demography.

The main problem Republicans faced in 2012, and will face in the next few years, is the same one Democrats confronted in 2004. The economy is picking up speed and the incumbent president's party is being rewarded.

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