The voting bloc that is the GOP's best opportunity
President Obama's party faces a strategic threat that should not be underestimated by the GOP. More than any other group, younger voters are turning away from Obama, and by extension from the Democratic Party which faces congressional elections next year. In the Guardian, Harry J. Enten writes:
Little attention has been paid to which age groups Obama has been losing support from. Often, public polls have small sample sizes for subsamples, especially for young people, who are difficult to reach. The Gallup tracker(and yes, Gallup's overall Obama approval matches other public polls) allows a way around this problem. Since it polls every day, we can add multiple polls together to get a very good idea of how Obama is doing by age group.
Obama's overall approval was 50.8% per Gallup in the month before election, but it has decreased by 5.1pt, to 45.7%, since July. The decline, it turns out, can mostly be ascribed to younger voters.
Compared to his average approval a month before the election, Obama's approval rating since the beginning of July has dropped 9.3pt, to 52.3%, among 18- to 29-year-olds. His approval among 30- to 49-year-olds has dipped by 5.7pt, to 45.5%.
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His approval among those older than 50 has stayed relatively stable comparatively.
Enten mentions two possible sources of this decline: The NSA scandals and the impact of the bad economy. Both no doubt contribute, but so does the ObamaCare disaster, which is going to force young people to subsidize others, and which is destroying job creation. Young people feel screwed (with some justification) by the fundamental transformation Obama promised and delivered. They just didn't realize that it included diminished career prospects and living in Mom and Dad's basement.
Obama is still winning support, overall, from young people, but the numbers buying into what he is selling are declining. This could deprive Democrats running next year of expected levels of support, leaving them vulnerable, while the GOP presumably racks up continued support for the older voters.
Part of the extended adolescence that is the norm in contemporary America is rebellion against the establishment. For too long the GOP has allowed itself to be characterized as the embodiment of the establishment. In point of fact, the establishment encountered by young people is not big business (which supports the Dems as much as the GOP anyway), but big education and big government. The GOP needs to learn how to go negative on the phoniness of the Democrats and their policies, citing the effect on young people and telling them not to fall for the sucker's game the Democrats offer to the young.
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