Democrats Owe W. A Big Thank You

George W. Bush will have many legacies, but one of the most important ones may be cementing Democratic majorities for a generation to come.  Commenting on the chart above issued by Pew, Kevin Drum notes:

You’ve probably seen this before from other sources, but the chart on the right basically shows that for the past 40 years voting patterns haven’t differed much by age. In fact, there’s virtually no difference between generations at all until you get to the George Bush era. At that point, young voters suddenly leave the Republican Party en masse. Millennials may be far less likely than older generations to say there’s a big difference between Republicans and Democrats, but their actual voting record belies that.

Whatever it was that Karl Rove and George Bush did—and there are plenty of possibilities, ranging from Iraq to gays to religion—they massively alienated an entire generation of voters. Sure, they managed to squeak out a couple of presidential victories, but they did it at the cost of losing millions of voters who will probably never fully return. This chart is their legacy in a nutshell.

Thank you!

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.