God bless, Nate Silver. He might have been off with the Oscars (Rourke ruined his own chances beyond statistical belief), but he is still one of the most on-the-nose political soothsayers around.
His latest prediction: George Bush’s mark will be with the Republicans for decades to come. By mark he means the image the GOP will portray to voters.
As Silver notes based off of the graph above, many of us mold our political tendencies during our late teens, around 18 or so. The president we have at that time essentially motivates our inclinations to one party or another. For Gen Yers (aka Millennials/Entitlement Age), George Bush was the president we had on our way to young adulthood. A very unpopular and unsuccessful president, W. will forever be imprinted in our political psyche. From FiveThirthyEight:
The 18-25 year olds, however, came of age in the George W. Bush Era. And Bush, at least the vast majority of us think, was not a good President. In fact, most of us would say, he was a really awful President. And the people who turned 18 during his tenure are associated with extremely low levels of Republican identification.
The reason this is a real worry for the Republicans is because you can still see the echo of past Presidencies on the partisan ID trends today. Popular presidents are associated with above-average levels of party support among the generation that came of age during their time in office, whereas unpopular Presidents are associated with below-average ones.
The opposite situation has the opposite effect. From the graph we can see that those who grew up with Reagan as their president, mostly Gen Xers, are associated with above-average Republican support. Reagan, a very popular and transformative president, left them with a good fuzzy feeling toward Republicans. Note those who grew up with Nixon (popular, then very unpopular) or JFK (popular) as their presidents. They both are very Democratic, but for different reasons.
This is all a sign that as the large Millennial generation continues to become increasingly political (as the recent election proved) the Republican party will have a very hard time persuading them to forget their younger, politically formative years.
You might want to check these out, too:
Tags: democrats · george bush · gop · nate silver · party politics1 Comment
[...] and millenials (ages 18-29) are no surprise (especially after Nate Silver’s breakdown of the damage Bush has done to his party for future generations). But losing voters in the Midwest, moderate voters, and low income to upper income voters carry a [...]