AMERICA - Vote 2012, the Generation Divide

"Will a Generational Divide Define 2012 Election?" PBS Newshour 11/3/2011

Excerpt

MARGARET WARNER (Newshour): With the presidential election a year away, the Pew Research Center has taken a look at the state of the American electorate, and its divisions along age lines. It is the most pronounced generation gap in decades.

Judy Woodruff reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): For the past few national elections, younger people have voted notably more Democratic than other age groups, while older voters have leaned reliably more Republican.

Pew's president, Andy Kohut, says this generational divide promises to be even more dramatic this time around.

ANDREW KOHUT, Pew Research Center: There are huge value differences between the youngest and oldest voters in the country that almost seem baked in.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The so-called millennial generation, voters 18 to 30, still like President Obama more than any other age group. But just half say they approve of the job he is doing, down 24 points from when he took office.

ANDREW KOHUT: The millennials gave Obama his biggest margin, over 20 percentage points. And the margin now is lower, but, more importantly than the actual margin, their level of engagement is much lower than it was four years ago.

Another excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF: Republican strategist Terry Holt says this presents a challenge for his party.

TERRY HOLT, Republican strategist: The dichotomy with senior voters is that, while we connect very well with them on fiscal issues and on values issues, with entitlement reform, like Social Security and Medicare, seniors are afraid that the government is going to hurt them somehow.

So, Republicans have to reach out and appeal to seniors, and at the same time give them assurances that they're not going to privatize Social Security, that they're not going to gut Medicare. And that's the challenge.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Pew's Andy Kohut says one more factor when comparing age groups is race.

ANDREW KOHUT: There's a huge racial difference between young Americans and older Americans.

Only 59 percent of the so-called millennials, the younger people, are white non-Hispanics. You go to the older group, and it's 90 percent white non-Hispanics. Older people look at the changing face of America and say, is this, all of these Latinos and Asians and immigrants, and the way the country is changing a good thing? And few of them say -- relatively few a say good thing.

The younger people look at these changes and say, of course it's a good thing. That's us.

COMMENT: I'm 66 and I totally agree with younger people on America's racial mix today, "of course it's a good thing."