Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

– Proverbs 22:6

If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.

– Unknown

There are differing views with respect to the effect of youthful education on adult attitudes, and this debate carries over into politics.  On one hand, you have people who lament or rejoice in the fact that the public education system is churning out progressive voters who will secure the future of the nation (the US, in this context) for the left.  On the other hand, you have people who are confident or concerned that the progressive passion of youth will give way to a more sober conservative mindset with age.  I thought it might be interesting to investigate this topic a little, using exit poll data.

For the purpose of this exercise, I decided to use exit polls from the New York Times (Source 1Source 2).  Since the youngest age category (18-29) completely ages up into the next age category (30-44) every 12 years, I decided to look at the data from every third election since the voting age was lowered to 18 (1972, 1984, 1996, 2008, 2020).  While this is not the most comprehensive way of looking at things, it does compare apples to apples over time and so is useful for the purposes of this exercise.  The resulting vote share received by each of the two major parties from the youngest two voting contingents in each of these elections is graphed below.

From this, it does appear that attitudes do change over time, but not completely and not always in the same direction.  The general trend seems to be a movement towards preference parity, which means that since the young generally tend to vote more liberally that they tend to move in a more conservative voting direction as they age.  In general there is about a 10 point shift in preference from when an age group is in their 20s to when they are in their 30s.  This indicates that attitudes are not set in stone but neither is change guaranteed to come with maturity.

Furthermore, looking at the gap between the preferences of the old and the young seems to indicate that this is indeed an enduring trend.  Taking the voting preference for each party of the youngest age group in each subject election and subtracting the voting preference of the oldest age group, to get the age preference gap, yields a graph as follows.

With the exception of the 1984 election (where Reagan managed the uncommon feat of bringing people together in their opinions across age groups) there is a persistent age gap of about 15 points, and always in the same direction.  This indicates to me that the shifting of opinions as people age is a fairly consistent trend, and thus I doubt it is about to be overturned any time soon.

This is good news for those (like myself) who do not desire a progressive future, as it indicates that there is a limit to the effectiveness of the progressive messaging.  I think it is safe to say that the educational, informational, and entertainment sectors in the US are dominated by left-leaning individuals (data on campaign donations by occupation supports this) and that as a consequence they tend to push an academic and cultural education on the youth that is decidedly left-wing.  And while it is a strong position to be in to dominate these sources that shape and sway opinions, it is clear that the message does not take for everyone and furthermore that it fails to stick for a good many people.

Take my generation, for example: Millennials.  The millennial generation is generally considered to comprise those born between 1981 and 1996, meaning that the oldest two-thirds are in the most recent youth cohort to age up (the green line on the first two graphs, 1979-1990).  As you can see, older millennial support for Obama was sky-high: 66% supported him as opposed to only 32% supporting his opponent McCain.  I clearly remember the fervor for him among my peers, even in unexpected places (such as in rural areas of a red state).  But fast forward 12 years, and support for Biden (Obama’s VP) among this same set of individuals was significantly lower: 52% supported him as opposed to 46% supporting Trump.  This 14-point shift means that up to 20% of Obama-supporting youth decided to back Trump after aging into their 30s.  And Trump was basically the anti-Obama, in tone, tenor, and policy, so that is not an insignificant shift.

The take-away is that a decent portion of the youth are willing to reconsider their political views as they age.  This gives an opening for not just conservatives but also libertarians (and others!) to try to convince the youth of the soundness of their ideas.  The battle of ideas doesn’t end at graduation; in fact, it may only truly begin.