this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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1676
Enlightened Centrism (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The numbers are clear. I'm not sure where the break down is happening.

  1. Young people constitute the predominant portion of the left base, especially if you account the far left. In other words, lefties and far lefties make an overlapping Venn diagram with young people. They are the same population.
  2. Young people do not vote.

Conclusion: 3. The current electorate is composed of old people that tend to skew conservative. Those people show up to vote -every time.

Where is the contradiction?

More info from Pew 2022 election polls:

Age and the 2022 election Age continues to be strongly associated with voting preferences in U.S. elections. Nearly seven-in-ten voters under 30 (68%) supported Democratic candidates in 2022 – much higher than the shares of voters ages 30 to 49 (52%), 50 to 64 (44%) and 65 and older (42%) who did so. Compared with 2018, GOP candidates performed better among voters who turned out across age groups.

Also:

Older voters turned out more reliably in both elections – and continued to be largely loyal to Republican candidates.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

  1. You have not proven this.

  2. You have proven this.

Even if you did prove 1, you still aren't tying not voting to leftists, but young people.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

For the last five decades, younger people have been trending left:

Statista

Edit: Just that most recent bar (gen z) should solidify this point. Despite a predominant portion being represented by Gen Z, we still only ave a slim majority in the House (and minority) in the senate. How do you explain that if your point is that left leaning people show up to vote?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Young people swing liberal, or even left. That doesn't mean the left is majority youth, or that leftism is what is tied to not voting, as opposed to youth.

I genuinely don't understand why this is a difficult logical hurdle for you to overcome.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Maybe I should be more precise in my language. I’m starting to realize that my rhetoric is a bit too general for social media and I’m painting with broad brush strokes to favor brevity (and I’m also tired). I never intended to say the left is predominantly youth, but rather that most youth skew left. If the youth showed up to vote, we wouldn’t have a slim majority in the house thus making any legislative progress almost impossible because of moderate democrats like J. Manchin — who are clearly representing their electorate— blocking any progressive bill. This topic is really well studied, I’m not sure why we’re even arguing.

Eligible Outsider Left were 9 percentage points less likely to vote in the 2020 presidential election than the average adult citizen and 11 points less likely to vote than the average Democrat or Democratic-leaning citizen. Only about two-in-ten (21%) say they follow what’s going on in government and politics most of the time.

From: Pew Research

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Sure. I agree with that. That's not what you were originally saying, but if you're retracting the initial and inserting this statement, we agree.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I think I can sort of meet you half way. I don't think the numbers detract a whole lot from my original point. Sure, many lefties vote, but if a significant portion of the Democratic electorate does not participate, that's already incapacitating it to a degree. Imagine what we could accomplish if we had supermajority in both houses and didn't have to cater to moderate Dems like Sinema or Manchin? Imagine if we could primary actual progressive candidates and young people showed up to the ballot. Instead we are left with an insular slim majority in only one of the houses.