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Here [1] are some data on this exact topic. Pew broke down ideology by age. While it's true that older individuals tend to become more conservative, this is a n
by rjf72 7y ago
Here [1] are some data on this exact topic. Pew broke down ideology by age. While it's true that older individuals tend to become more conservative, this is a not a new phenomena and has been observed and commented upon for centuries. Of course when young we know there is no chance we could ever 'compromise' our views as the years pass. Nonetheless, life experience changes us in ways we often could never have predicted. Ok, but in spite of this there's no crystal clear correlation. In particular the split among ideology on the 65+ group that most consistently votes one way or the other (representing about 66% of the entire population) is split 50/50. And similarly there is also much more diversity in views among younger individuals than is typically represented by e.g. social media.
The one interesting correlation they did observe is one between your cohort's (by age group) voting tendencies and whom the president was when your cohort turned 18. Like you mention the Greatest generation who turned 18 under FDR lean heavily democratic. Though contradicting your hypothesis is the fact that you're presumably referencing WW2. And the Silent generation served extensively in this war. And they lean heavily republican.
One interesting thing I've observed (and wrote in a post a little above in a peer to this comment chain) is there tends to be a periodic shifting of ideology, that in general just tends to be against the status quo. And Pew's data provides some really interesting insight there. For instance they broke Boomers down into three 5 year groups. The groups are divided based upon who was president when they turned 18. Those 3 presidents were Kenny/Johnson, Nixon, and Ford/Carter. The Ford/Carter combination is frustrating for data, but regardless the results we get:
- Kennedy/Johnson - lean heavily republican
- Nixon - lean heavily democrat
- Ford/Carter - lean heavily republican
Not easy to classify things in a straight forward way, but interesting data nonetheless!
[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/09/the-politics-of-american-generations-how-age-affects-attitudes-and-voting-behavior/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/09/the-politic...