Conventional wisdom assumes that Democrats — the party of gay marriage, higher education reform, and the environment — have a lock on young voters. But while the GOP has deeply serious obstacles to overcome if it wants to win younger voters, the millennial generation may be more up for grabs than many people think.
Let’s start with the Republicans, whose problems with the younger generation stem from the party’s far-right positions on social issues, poor branding, and a perpetual conservative echo chamber. Former President George H.W. Bush speechwriter Mary Kate Carey outlines the GOP’s challenges:
Only 18 percent of millennials call themselves members of the GOP; more millennials are Democrats (31 percent); the most (45 percent) are Independents. When I teach college classes, I find that very few college students will admit in public to being Republican… It’s time for the GOP to make itself the party of ideas again, especially when dealing with young people. There’s a real opportunity for making a fact-based case for flexible, free-market, limited-government solutions to challenges important to the next generation. Let’s hear about a Republican alternative to ObamaCare, about urban enterprise zones, a new tax code, school choice, and reforming Medicare and Social Security. [U.S. News]
Republicans are aware they have a big problem but are doing little to fix it. Among the many ignored bits of advice in the GOP’s famous, costly March 2013 “autopsy” report was a call to make the Republican tent bigger and more appealing to young people.
Graphic via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.