Baby boomers losing clout at ballot box
WASHINGTON — American politics are on the cusp of a revolution. And it has nothing to do with President Donald Trump.
That’s because younger generations — who are generally more liberal and reluctant to identify with either political party — are overtaking their older counterparts for the first time since the baby boomers began to dominate every aspect of American life in the last half of the 20th century, researchers say.
A report from the Pew Research Center published last week found that millennials and Generation X voters outnumbered baby boomers and older generations for the first time ever in the 2016 presidential election. The report marks the latest milestone in a trend that demographers say will keep building for at least another 20 years. And while Pew includes Gen X voters in its report, millennials alone outnumber boomers as a whole and are driving the trend.
The population shift has yet to make a mark in elections. That’s partly because young people are less likely to vote. It’s partly because Republicans have been able to harness a backlash from older, white voters who fear their status is slipping. And it’s partly because Democrats have done a bad job so far in capitalizing on what should be an obvious advantage — a failure that cost them in 2016, population and political experts said.
As more millennials enter the voting pool — and as baby boomers die — demographers say the odds will shift in the Democrats’ favor, though some Republicans call such predictions overblown.
“For as long as most voters can remember, the baby boomers have always been the biggest bloc of voters,” said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center, who authored the report on the youth vote. “This is significant. They’re losing influence. They’re losing clout.”
Millennials, defined by Pew as people aged 18 to 35 in 2016, have a vastly different political outlook and life experience than even their next-oldest peers (Gen Xers). The oldest among them came of age after the internet. The youngest were too young to remember the 9/11 terrorist attacks.