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Why voters’ ages mattered so much in latest elections

James Gimpel

Posted: 11.13.2009 / 11:30 AM PST

The high turnout of older voters and the lighter turnout of the young certainly helps to explain the difference between last year’s presidential election and last week’s Republican victories in the gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey.

President Obama even had his grass-roots political organization, Organizing for America, involved in those campaigns to mobilize the voters who turned out for him last year. But in both states, turnout of younger and minority voters was down, as it has been in previous off-year contests. Why does the age of those who happen to vote matter so much to the outcome of elections?

It has long been the case that older voters hold more conservative views on a host of political issues than younger voters do. Typically, polls show a 12- to 15-percentage-point difference in self-identified liberal-conservative ideology between those in the youngest group and those in the oldest.

There are two main explanations for this association between age and growing conservatism: the life-cycle hypothesis and the generational hypothesis.

More conservative with age

The life-cycle explanation suggests that individuals’ viewpoints change as they move through various stages of life. The first major life change is the one from young adulthood to marriage and family, and is associated with settling in one location and raising children. In general, this shift is now happening later in life – into people’s thirties – than it did in the 1950s and 1960s. Transition from single to married with children is an unquestionably conservative force, turning people into homeowners and stakeholders, raising awareness of household budgeting, saving for college, and heeding the quality of schools, the levels of taxation, and the moral and religious instruction of children.

The next major life transition is to the empty nest, occurring between ages 50 and 60 for most Americans. This is accompanied by an increased attention to preparations for retirement, saving and investing, and health.

The final stage is retirement itself, with its focus on health and longevity, and the well-being of offspring.

Each stage, then, brings a slightly new set of concerns. While fundamental party identification may not change much with age, the kinds of issues that are important to one’s life certainly do. Compared with the carefree orientation of college-age single people, older citizens are much more restrained in their behavior and attitudes.

Each generation distinct

The generational hypothesis, on the other hand, suggests that each generation has a distinctive political imprint, wrought by events that socialized them in their teen and young-adult years, that remains relatively stable over their lifetimes. Hence, baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) have always been more liberal than the “greatest generation” (born before 1928), no matter what their stage of life.

For example, in 1987, those over age 65 were Americans who had lived through World War II and the Great Depression. Surveys at the time suggested that about half of them saw themselves as conservative. But in 2009, 22 years later, far fewer of these Americans are still living, and baby boomers are on the cusp of retirement. Surveys show that only 30 to 31 percent of respondents over age 65 call themselves conservative. That 20-point drop is pretty dramatic.

There is probably some truth to both accounts. Perhaps not every generation bears a distinctive political identity, but some do.

What Americans say about their political evolution

An interesting July survey of 41,175 respondents by Zogby International asks what few pollsters have asked: Over your lifetime, do you believe your political ideology has become more liberal, has become more conservative, or has not changed?

Notably, the big shift in political orientation emerges at about age 35 or 36 and continues through the mid-50s, corresponding to the time when most people have settled and are engaged in childrearing (see chart).

Examination of these data by single years of age shows that those saying they have moved in a liberal direction over their (short) lifetimes are primarily between ages 18 and 27, with such reports dropping off sharply after age 30.

Those reporting having moved in a more conservative direction peak in the late-40s, with fewer respondents reporting that they have become more conservative after age 50. Still, many fewer Americans over age 55 (21 percent) report moving in a liberal direction over the course of their lifetimes than report becoming more conservative (50 percent). Baby boomers, approximately ages 46 to 63, may have started out liberal but readily admit becoming more conservative with time.

From a generational viewpoint, the age cohort that seems to have moved most conservative over time is the late-boomers and post-baby boomers who came of age during the Reagan years. Those Americans are now in their early and mid-40s. But the life-cycle explanation might be the better one – that the experience of family life instills more conservative values in many people – with respect to both economic and social issues, than they expressed when they were younger.

It would appear that as the current crop of youthful Americans moves toward settling down, their views on many issues will follow those of past generations and become more conservative, though perhaps not as conservative as their parents and grandparents. Related survey questions suggest that economic conservatism is especially likely to grow in middle-age, although social conservatism does as well.

Does where you live make you more or less conservative?

So, does where a person lives have any effect on the inclination to move in a more conservative direction with age? Looking at the chart through the prism of the 12 Patchwork Nation community types, it becomes clear that the general pattern – people become more conservative as they get older – exists across all community types, although some places exhibit more distance between young and old than others.

“Tractor Country” and “Immigration Nation” are locales where solid pluralities across all age groups report becoming more conservative over the course of their lives. Even 64 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in America’s most rural areas report having moved in a more conservative direction over the course of their short lives.

“Military Bastions” appear to have a very conservative socializing impact, as do “Minority Central” communities, “College and Careers,” and the “Mormon Outposts.” (College and Careers may seem surprising among this group, but there is quite a gap in viewpoint between the large number of college-age youths who report moving in a more liberal direction and the older residents of these counties who report becoming more conservative. Many of these older residents are not affiliated with the universities and colleges in these communities.)

The fact that the general pattern illustrated in the chart holds up across the variable geography of the nation does not mean that everyone winds up holding the same views by the time they retire. This is because people start from different places. Becoming more conservative in a large city may make one a moderately minded Democrat in the golden years. Becoming more conservative in a Military Bastion probably means an ever-more-conservative and Republican voting record. Political socialization is colored by local forces, in spite of some seemingly universal laws that apply far and wide.