Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Generational Partisanship (or Why Millennials May Not Save Us from Partisan Loyalty and Polarization)

As many may have realized by now (by reading some of my previous posts), I've become very interested in the generational dynamics underway in American politics, and particularly in North Carolina (through voter registration figures and analyses). But voter registration only tells part of the story--a companion aspect to our political environment is voting "behavior," especially about voters' party self-identification and supporting presidential candidates, when it can be a driving force of our partisanship and polarization.

In trying to better understand the partisanship and potential polarization coming from party identification in our nation, along with the generational dynamics that are happening (especially with the rising Millennial generation), I ran a series of analyses using survey data from the American National Elections Studies (ANES) to investigate the following questions:
  • Are Americans really moving into political independence with the "rise of the independent" or are we seeing another phenomenon, especially when it comes to voting behavior of these independents?
  • What have been the trends in recent presidential elections when it comes to partisan self-identification and presidential vote choices among the four generations in the American electorate?