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The Gender Gap is Closing
The gender gap -- the tendency of women to vote more often for Democrats and men to prefer Republicans -- has been a feature of American politics for decades. On Super Tuesday pundit, David Gergen, captured what many considered a truism when he referred to the Democrats as the "mommy party" and the Republicans as the "daddy party." But by the time the Potomac primary was over this week, even that seemingly immutable feature of America's political landscape had begun to shift. As Obama expanded his already large margin of support among Millennials, his surging support also earned him an even split with Clinton among women. Now a survey conducted last month by the Millennial Strategy Program of Frank N. Magid Associates demonstrates how the emergence of the new Millennial Generation (voters 25 years old and younger) is closing the gender gap in American politics.
The phenomenon of a wide difference in party preferences and political attitudes by gender stemmed from the rise of the Baby Boomer Generation in the late 1960s. When idealist generations, such as the Boomers today and the Missionary Generation about 80 years ago, dominate the electorate, the political debate tends to focus on divisive social issues. The battle over women's suffrage at the turn of the 20th century is an early example. More recently, the debate has focused on the basic societal, familial, and economic roles of the sexes, along with educational and career opportunities for women, and reproductive issues.
Reflecting these debates, Boomer men and women early on developed very different political attitudes and preferences that persist to this day. According to the Magid study, a plurality of male Baby Boomers (39%) are self-identified Republicans, while just under a third call themselves Democrats (32%). By contrast, half of female Boomers (50%) say they're Democrats and only 20 percent are Republicans. Similarly, by a ratio of 1.75:1 Boomer males say they are conservative rather than liberal or progressive (35% vs. 20%). On the other hand, slightly more Boomer females call themselves liberal or progressive rather than conservative (25% vs. 23%). Majorities of Boomer women say they will vote for Democratic presidential (56%) and congressional (51%) candidates, while the voting preferences of Boomer men are split about evenly between the two parties.
Millennials, however, are a "civic" generation, like their GI Generation grandparents and great grandparents, so their political agenda is focused on achieving societal unity and in revitalizing political and government institutions rather than advancing moral causes and social issues. This change is reflected in the political attitudes and beliefs of Millennial males and females, whose voting behavior is much more similar than is the case with either Boomer or Gen X men and women. Among Millennials, for instance, most males and females have supported Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the early primaries and caucuses, while within older generations, men have tended toward Obama and women toward Clinton.
The Magid survey confirms this decreasing distinction between males and females among the Millennial generation. A solid plurality of female Millennials identifies as Democrats rather Republicans (43% vs. 14%), as do a somewhat smaller number of males (32% vs. 21%). Millennial women overwhelmingly indicate that they will vote for a Democratic rather than a Republican presidential candidate (52% vs. 16%) and a Democratic over a Republican congressional candidate (49% vs. 16%). Most Millennial men also say they would vote for Democratic over Republican presidential (42% vs. 31%) and congressional (41% vs. 29%) candidates.
Regardless of gender, most Millennials call themselves liberals or progressives rather than conservatives. Twenty-eight percent of Millennial males think of themselves as liberals and progressives compared with 20 percent who call themselves conservatives. Among females, 31 percent are liberals or progressives and 13 percent conservatives.
A new civic generation, the Millennials, is on the verge of giving American politics an extreme makeover. Unlike the Baby Boomers, who remain sharply divided by ideology and gender, the young men and women of the Millennial Generation will be working and voting together to change America and its government.
Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, published by Rutgers University Press.
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Michael and Morley, you're just saying this in hopes of "making" it be true, and maybe directing some of the Obama excitement over to Senator Clinton. Trouble is, it's the YOUNGER people who fall for this, to their detrement, because if they believe some other generation is to blame for things, they'll go right on doing nothing for themselves. It so happens that the ones actually VOTING for Obama, in fact, are BOOMERS, or many of them are, and in my case, I am the one trying to convince my kidlets to vote for him, not the reverse. If you look around, you'll see it's the Baby Boomers who drive the hybrids, keep them in the garage except when needed, car pool with friends, get all errands done in a single trip, lecture the grandbabies on fairness and equality and the environment, and it's us who raised our kids to be the same, but too many of our kids drive SUVs and huge vans and pickups anyway, and throw trash out the car windows, and pollute their bodies with fast food and drugs, our grandbabies' bodies too, and our kids are the ones who are fat (mine aren't), and our grandbabies too (mine aren't), and it's us who vote, and us who urge our kids to vote, for all the good it does. Saying otherwise doesn't make it true, but it stirs up the "younger" people to making assinine go-along comments on all this, as if they aren't 40 themselves by now, and largely responsible for there being nobody at the switch these days, while Baby Boomers look on in pure dismay.
Oh, great.
Setting up the future "divide and conquer" little buzzphrases.
Something noticed sneaking about in the Corporate Media and Policy wonktalk:
AGE IS THE NEW DISEASE.
If you are OLD, somehow that is a SICKNESS....
Don't go there, dudes.
Hell hath no fury as an old woman......
Period.
Ask the German generation right after WWII.
As a member of the millenial generation, and a female, I first want to thank the Boomers for certain freedoms: I was raised with title IX, never realizing that I was not expected to perform or achieve less than my male peers. That has given me the freedom to pick the candidate whom I feel is best to address the problems of the future. I've lived in a technological and truly global reality from the beginning. I want a president who understands the challenges AND possibilities that this reality brings. I've read the positions of all 3 (now 2) major candidates and have decided to support Mr. Obama.
In reference to those who still see my generation through the lens of the immature, potty-mouthed posters on this site: I apologize for their attitudes, though I'm not convinced they are all under 25. Ignorance is not immutably linked to youth.
Also, I ask to you look at other characteristics of my generation: though many of us have been raised outside the framework of teh traditional nuclear family, and most were "latch key" children, we have lower incidences of tobacco use, drug use, abortions, and unprotected sex. Volunteerism is quickly becoming a hallmark of our generation. We have been raised with the realities of AIDS, have been educated on the environment, and have seen the effects of divorce. We aren't perfect, but please don't write us off as an unfit voting population just yet.
Gen X seconds that notion.
A factor to consider in Millenials' civic-mindedness: sheer demography. I grew up, as a Gen-Xer, with almost no kids my age on my block. By contrast the Millenials were bursting with peers -- gives them more social-mindedness as a very big generalization.
Keep your eyes on the Millenial Christians. They're rejecting their Boomer parents' ideology, too. There's a coming realignment of American political forces.
The internet gives us the gift of information while also giving us the pain and anger built on misinformation and outright lying. There is not anyway to gauge the truthiness of what is written on any website/posting. We have to decide who we will trust to give us the most honest, truthful information. Based on our ability to determine what is the truth we will accept is what the internet comes down to being our information source. That said the generation gap is less of one if the majority agrees on the website that tells the truth. As we see with just this website the various posting reflect mostly democratic views but with much anger and division as can still be with our population over two candidates. The younger generations are split into haves and have nots. We don't have prosperity as a sure thing unless you are in the haves so the have nots are more unhappy in the plight of their families and friends. The last thing that made the haves was the dot coms and that burst like the house bubble. So social activists are the wave we have to be in now. Climate change and the economy having us with less hope for the future and who will take us throught this negative hope cycle. Hillary can't sell the future to these who feel lost so much as she sells to those who remember how things once were. We cannot go back to that as it was the dot coms who made the money her husband had when he was in office.
Incorrectamundo, engineer68. The Millennials are a unique group. They will be the largest generation by 2016: 82 million and voting. They do not have our Boomer values. In fact, they will come to hold them in contempt, as some of them have already and are displaying that in the vote turnout.
They dont buy this war shit that the Boomers have fallen prey to. This national disgrace that we alone as a country are free to create pre-emptive war against another country because we have the most guns, and that we are free to create imaginary reasons for doing so with no one held accountable. The Millenials understand that the Boomers are murderers. Disgraceful murderers and slaughterers of people. We killed over 600,000 babies in Iraq during the 90s. We killed over 1 million innocent Iraqi civilians since March 2003.
There is no morality for this. And I thank the Millennials for standing up and saying so. They are my heroes.
Ditto. Even though I was on the anti-war side of the divide, I look back and see our lack of civic involvement as one of the co-conspirators of the "culture of death." We rested on our laurels after Vietnam. We took the fruits of peace and to some extent wasted them when a preoccupation with wealth and old age set in. The Millennials are our only hope to see a real fullfilment of the peace and justice movement. May their numbers grow and flourish.
I'm an old Boomer, and I agree with you. I'm looking forward to the next generation taking over and running things as they see fit. It's the circle of life. We had our turn, and now it's theirs. I trust our younger citizens to do what's right for all of us and I rejoice in watching them spread their wings and fly.
Bring back the "Draft" and watch the millennials and the Gen-x'ers pee their pants. These pampered groups don't know what life is about. I am a first year baby-boomer, and I could not care less about these groups. A little hardship in their lives and they would take the bridge.
Bring back the draft and they'd swing even MORE liberal. What's your point?
whether they take the bridge or not might be the "boomer" parents resposibility in regards to the rearing of the child...
I doubt if you could bring back the draft and these young people have had it hard: much harder indeed than the boomers ... As a boomer myself I know we were the recipients of Post World War Two prosperity ... these young people are the first generation to grow up with less than their parents, they are a socially and politically committed and the sophistication and clarity of their analysis amazes me ..
I do not think the draft is the issue ... the issue is how boomers (and I am a boomer too) tend to pain young people as predatory and mutant -- there is a difference between the generation gap between the 60's and now in the past young people were simultaneously transgressive and revered in other words parents had hope for the children as the future ... I do not see that happening especially with comments like yours ... if you were a last year boomer you were not subject to the draft ... please ...
the question is why are you so hostile?
Born in 1946, drafted in 1968 and served Viet Nam june 68 to july 69, noboby hates war more than Veterans. I was speaking to a future that may have adversity. Draft built integerity, and strength. Not every veteran served in combat. The draft was good for things like Character, and responsibilty. In the not to distant future China will loom large in our future, debt will horrendous. Can todays young people deal with it? That was my point. I was not a supporter of Bushs war in Iraq.
If this proves out over time, it will be an interesting phenomenon.
Are there statistics on the gender-ideology split prior to Vietnam? How did the Reagan revolution affect this measurement?
I'd like to know previous stats so we could try and understand the cause and affect.
Does the millenial generation have a clue about the meaning of sexism and misogynism? It seems to me they lash out on every message board on the internet using the most vulgar and profane sexist/misogynist language in the book to assault Hillary Clinton on behalf of their idol Obama,whom they present as a saint.
At the same time, they erupt in outrage at the slightest perceived hint of racism.
And you argue the millenials transcend the old divisiveness of the Boomers. You must be living in a parallel universe.
Nobody on the Obama side is spewing misogyny. Hillary's minion post these "Potemkin Villages" in comments on Huffpo in a vain attempt to gin up support. The real issue is not sex or race, it's a devotion to a mind-set that constantly keeps up "fighting them over there," at the same time we're "fighting with each other, over here."
We're not the one's selling a trip back to an "idealized" 90's, we reject the "fairy tale" of a romanisized past and offer a more realistic path to the future.
It's Bill and Hillary who think we can make progress while fighting every step of the way. To them, everything is politics without the guidence of philosophy.
Words without music is not a song to sing. And winning elections without change doesn't mean a thing.
Lovethesinner.
"Nobody on the Obama side is spewing misogyny."
You are living in a parallel universe. All you have to do is scan this message board for a strong dose of reality. Take a look at what members of the millenial generation had to say regarding David Shuster's comment labeling Chelsea Clinton's campaigning for her mother as "pimping." It's the millenials who defended Shuster's comment, claiming it was appropriate. To my mind this is simply appalling.
Nobody in the Obama campaign has spewed sexism or misogyny ... and your comparative oppression location identity politics are really part of the problem ... that sort of paradigmatic static notion of what feminism is remains part of a second wave feminism ... philosophy like language evolves ... second wave feminism gave way to other forms and philosophies of feminism including notions like Haraway's hybridity and Queer Theory and a re-examination of ideas like hegemony (which is what your either/or comments do speak to) ...
They do transcend the divisiveness of the Boomers ... it is a different perception and if you would listen frankly from what I have seen as a mother of post-millennials and as a professor who teaches this generation --- refreshing and wonderful --- for example have you seen the radical cheerleaders or the protests against the panoptican (the cameraheads) or the protests designed to take back public space ... yes they are different in form and content than what the boomers did or did not do ... give it up ... and get over it ... try listening instead of reacting ...
KaAp,
I suggest you read Professor Lois Dubin's letter to MSNBC regarding David Shuster's use of the word "pimping" to describe Chelsea Clinton's campaigning for her mother. Professor Dubin, who teaches at Smith College, doesn't take sides between Clinton or Obama, but she has strong words for the blatant sexism and misogyny so prevalent in the media.
Here's the link: http://katalusis.blogspot.com/2008/02/msnbcs-schuster-ignites-latest-media.html
The voting public is getting wiser and more connected thanks to the internet and (god help me for saying it) 24-hour news stations. We are being bombarded with information, and instead of turning away, we are diving in deeper.
Maybe this will stop this hair-splitting demographic targeting that boxes in people and takes away their ability to choose for themselves. Maybe now we'll be more concerned about the best possible outcome rather than our way or the highway.
Maybe now we'll finally get something done.
excerpted from: http://www.politicalmaelstrom.blogspot.com
George Bush-
Two terms
Two faces
Two failed wars
Two recessions
Two million foreclosures
Gee, I wonder why the GOP is losing males?
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