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Sunday, February 1st, 2015

U.S. Baby Boomers More Likely to Identify as Conservative

Author:     Jeffrey M. Jones
Source:     The Gallup Organization
Publication Date:     30 January 2015
 Link: U.S. Baby Boomers More Likely to Identify as Conservative
Stephan:   There is an old adage that one is a liberal in youth and a conservative at death. It is an empirical observation made repeatedly in the human narrative. And this research validates the observation. What I think it misses is the Presentiment Effect. There a significant body of research showing that before you become cognitively aware of something in registers physically in your body -- eyes dilate, certain parts of the brain become active. The more emotionally affecting -- violence, warzones, sexual imagery -- the greater the response. And fear or anxiety produces a very strong response. It affects the right amygdala -- the almond shaped structure in our brain that oversees "fight or flight." When it is active  the capacity for rational thought is diminished. It is associated with conservative politics, fundamentalist religiousity, and fear. And I think that is a factor in these results. This data also emphasizes why getting younger people to vote is so important if we are to put in place compassionate life-affirming policies. Older people get scared perhaps because mortality is closer.

This article is part of an ongoing series analyzing how baby boomers — those born from 1946 to 1964 in the U.S. — behave differently from other generations as consumers and in the workplace. The series also explores how the aging of the baby-boom generation will affect politics and well-being.

PRINCETON, N.J. — Older generations of Americans are much more likely to describe their political views as conservative than as liberal. This includes the large baby boom generation, of whom 44% identified as conservative and 21% as liberal last year. That 23-percentage-point conservative advantage is less than the 31-point edge for the older traditionalist generation, but greater than those for Generation Xers and millennials. In fact, millennials are about as likely to say they are liberal as to say they are conservative.

Ideological Self-Identification, by Generation, 2014

The results are based on aggregated data from 14 separate Gallup polls conducted in 2014, including interviews with more than 16,000 U.S. adults, aged 18 and older.

The ideological differences across the major generations in the U.S. are consistent with generational differences in party preferences, as older generations tend to be more Republican and younger generations more Democratic.

Older generations are also […]

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