By Deborah Netburn / Los Angeles Times/TNS
NATIONAL polls suggest millennials will vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by large margins in November, but that doesn’t mean millennials lean further to the left than young people of previous generations.
On the contrary, according to a new study, a larger percentage of millennials identified as conservative during their last year of high-school than did baby boomers and GenXers when they were the same age.
In 1976, when baby boomers were donning their caps and gowns, 21 percent of high-school seniors identified themselves as conservative. In 2014, when it was the millennials’ turn to graduate, 29 percent did so, the study authors report.
Meanwhile, the percentage of high school seniors who identified as liberal was 35 percent in 1976 and 34 percent in 2014.
“In the 1980s, when the GenXers were young, it was considered the height of the young conservative—remember Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties”? said study leader Jean Twenge, a social psychologist at San Diego State University. “But among millennials, we see a higher percentage of those identifying as conservative than we did then. Considering the reputation of millennials as a very liberal generation, that is pretty surprising.”
Similar trends
THE study, published this week in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, found that generational groups have traditionally grown more conservative and Republican over time.
On average, Americans identify as more politically liberal at age 18 and become increasingly conservative between their 20s and 60s. If the millennial generation—defined as those born between 1980 and 1994—continues that pattern, “they will not be the highly Democratic and liberal generation many had anticipated,” Twenge and her colleagues wrote. “Right now, millennials look very liberal and more likely to vote for a Democrat, but maybe that’s just because they are young,” Twenge added in an interview.
Image credits: Brian vander Brug/Los Angeles Times/TNS