Obama’s Children and the 2020 election
Demographers and economists like to say “demography is destiny.” This has never been as true as it is today as we head into the 2020 presidential election.
While Barack and Michelle Obama have two children, Malia and Sasha, they actually have 64 million children. In the 16 years between 1987 and 2002, there were over 64 million Americans born. Americans born between 1987 and 1990 were first eligible to vote in 2008, President Obama’s first election. Those born between 1999 and 2002 will be voting in 2020 in their first election. While Obama has been out of office since 2017, his influence and modeling of how a president should act and govern are firmly established with this group of young Americans.
Who are these Obama Children? For many Americans, they are our children, also. My two children are either firmly within this demographic or a bit outside the cohort on the older side. But there are similarities I see in my two children that I also see with Obama’s 64 million children.
This is a cohort that does not use landline telephones when they are living in their own apartments or houses. This is a cohort that also does not subscribe to hard copy newspapers or news magazines. This is a cohort that was also the first to cut the cable TV cord.
Obama’s Children are digital to an extreme. Their phones are their sources of information, entertainment, communication, banking, investing and interacting with the larger nondigital economy. Obama’s Children have concerns focused on climate change, income and wealth inequality, global citizenship, social entrepreneurship, diversity, science and peace. These are important characteristics not only for entrepreneurs and large companies to understand, but these facts will determine the success politicians have motivating and getting Obama’s Children to the polls next November.
This large cohort of young voters is not monolithic; there are Republican and Democratic young voters in this large group. But we know from analysis of the 2018 midterm elections that this is a population that leans heavily Democrat. In a close election every demographic group’s participation is important, but there is no more important group of potential voters than these young voters.
The 2018 midterm election was the largest voter participation in U.S. history, with over 110 million Americans voting. If 50 percent of Obama’s Children vote in 2020 and 75 percent of them vote Democrat, that represents a 16 million voter advantage in just this one demographic. Seventyfive percent of these young voters might seem like a stretch, but exit polls from the 2016 election show that Trump only garnered 36 percent of the votes of 18 to 29yearold voters. This number would have been even lower had voter turnout been larger.
The size and characteristics of Obama’s Children suggests strategies for both Democratic candidates and the Trump campaign. Whoever survives the Democratic primary needs to seriously consider a “young” running mate who can energize and speak to them without the need of a youth whisperer. The three septuagenarians leading the race suggest a need for a running mate who is significantly younger than the eventual nominee.
For Trump, this demographic analysis suggests that his success will depend on a policy of voter suppression. There are simply not enough “Trump voters” to make up a 16 millionvote deficit among Obama’s Children if enough of them come out to vote. Trump already has a significant gender deficit (63 percent of unmarried women in 2016 voted for Clinton compared to Trump’s 32 percent); a gaping black deficit (94 percent of black women voted for Clinton in 2016 compared to 4 percent for Trump); a large Latino deficit (65 percent of Latinos between the ages of 30 and 44 voted for Clinton compared to 28 percent for Trump). And recent polls indicate that Trump is now losing whites with college degrees and white women. This only leaves evangelicals, older whites, rural whites and whites with lower levels of educational attainment left to support the president in 2020. In all of these categories of Trump strengths, the demographics are against him because each of these groups is declining relative to the total population.
Voter suppression was one of the strategies employed by the Russians in 2016. They created online groups to suppress the black vote. They sent over 1 million targeted messages on social media that were specifically designed to discourage interest and participation in the election by painting both candidates as equally unsatisfactory. The Russian campaign, according to the CIA, the NSA and the FBI, also had a strong bias towards Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton. The intelligence community concluded in 2017 that the Russian success in 2016 would probable lead them to continue their interference in 2020. Given the demographics of Obama’s Children, we should expect that voter suppression by the Trump campaign will focus on reducing participation among this cohort.
The prophylactic for this type of voter suppression is information and facts. If Obama’s Children want to see the changes I hear from my students and my children and their friends, they need to register to vote, start paying attention and be prepared to be discouraged to perform their sacred right of all American citizens — which is to vote in 2020. The power of the American electorate has shifted in the direction of Obama’s Children. It is up to them. Demographics is destiny — if people vote!
We should expect that voter suppression by the Trump campaign will focus on reducing participation among this cohort.