A little less than one week ago, Pew Research Center published a survey wherein United States citizens from four different generations were asked ten political values questions in order to determine what ideological make up permeated each generation.
Jocelyn Kiley and Michael Dimock authored the article, which sums up its findings bluntly within the title, “The GOP’s Millennial problem runs deep.” This is expanded upon almost immediately in the first paragraph, “…even those Millennials who do identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP are decidedly less conservative than older Republicans.”
While poll results are extremely helpful in describing the political mindsets of a population, various co-factors must also be taken into account when analyzing the data said Andrew Gardner, an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Wyoming.
“Pew is a great resource. Solid, solid survey company,” Garner said. “You can take the information as not being biased…but I think a lot of the results we see here are time bound.”
With the millennial generation turning eighteen around the time of the last few years of the presidency of George W. Bush, they were exposed to a tanking economy that was being directly linked to the Republican leadership said Garner.
Andrew Server, President of the College Republicans UW Chapter said that he too thinks that the economy strongly dictates a generation’s political ideology.
“I see the economy as being like a pendulum.” Server said. “No matter what a president does, most of the time the economy turns around every several years. With Bush it was on a bad turn, and under Obama things started to level out again. That probably affected the findings in this poll.”
While interpretation of the data should be done cautiously, Garner said that the difference that each generation shows on issue positions is quite straightforward.
“The economic and cultural wars that divided earlier generations on political issues don’t really seem to matter to millennials,” said Garner. “They are far less partisan than any preceding generation.”
Server said that while he thinks this generation of conservatives are more accepting of certain social policies, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have come to internalize increasingly liberal values.
“With our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, many of the issues that are hot topics today, such as gay marriage, simply weren’t even acknowledged,” said Server. “Now we’ve grown up learning about every side of these issues, and that familiarity is what makes us less opposed to these types of things.”
Specific statistics from the report itself show that, amongst millennials who identify with the GOP party, only 31 percent display truly conservative leanings. The vast majority of millennials who identify with the GOP have mixed political values.
