Issues Will Drive the Democratic Vote

By SAM URETSKY

In 2018, Gallup took a poll of what issues were important to voters. They got one set of figures from Democrats and another set from Republicans. Eighty five percent of Republicans rated the economy as their most important issue, while among Democrats that issue dropped to 72%. Among Democrats, healthcare came in first at 87%, tied with “Way women are treated in US society.”

The professionals will note the poll results and Democrats will talk about healthcare while Republicans will talk about taxes, and that’s too bad, because there’s another issue which might help Democrats take an important part of the Republican vote. Seventy five percent of Democrats considered climates change as extremely or very important, while only 27% of Republicans had that opinion. That’s bad for the planet, but could be good for electoral politics.

We talk about voting patterns by groups – by race gender, religion, and other traits. The youth vote has always been important to the Democratic party, but it has been impossible to hold onto from year to year. The younger turn-out isn’t automatic, while the Republicans can feel confident that their geriatric supporters will make it to the polls. But In June 2015, the US Census Bureau issued a press release, “Millennials Outnumber Baby Boomers and Are Far More Diverse, Census Bureau Reports.” President Trump was born in 1946, making him a Baby Boomer, a generation that could look back with pride at what their parents had accomplished. The Census report states: “Millennials, or America’s youth born between 1982 and 2000, now number 83.1 million and represent more than one quarter of the nation’s population. Their size exceeds that of the 75.4 million baby boomers. Overall, millennials are more diverse than the generations that preceded them, with 44.2% being part of a minority race or ethnic group”

The very conservative Alliance For Market Solutions did their own polling and issued what should be taken as a warning: “Republicans need to respond to evolving public opinion and demographics on the issue of climate change while staying true to conservative principles.” Elsewhere they wrote, “Millennials are a critical voter group that is essential to the future success of the Republican Party. Polls show that they are even more concerned than the average voter, nearly 70% believing that the federal government should take action on climate change immediately or within 10 years.”

Ypulse, an organization that focuses on the attitudes of generation Z and millenials reported on this groups attitude towards climate change: “The environment, specifically climate change, is an issue that Gen Z & Millennials agree is the biggest problem their generations are facing, and it’s the issue they were most likely to name as a vote decider. This year, hundreds of thousands of students around the world skipped school to protest climate change inaction, inspired by 16-year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg’s once-solitary weekly strike in front of Sweden’s parliament. In a more extreme move, 18-year-old Emma Lim started the hashtag #NoFutureNoChildren to encourage her peers to never have children in response to climate change inaction — and it went viral. But young people are also expecting that politicians will listen to their concerns — and this key issue will influence which candidates they’ll be supporting.”

The value of owning the issue becomes more important this election year because of increased political polarization. The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication published an article, “The development of partisan polarization on the Green New Deal,” in the journal Nature Climate Change. In a survey taken in December 2018, 57% of conservative Republicans and 93% of liberal Democrats favored the Green New Deal. A repeat poll in April 2019 showed that support among liberal Democrats was essentially unchanged at 96% but support among conservative Republicans hasd dropped to 32%. Climate change has become an us or them issue. The study found that the support for the Green New Deal declined among Fox viewers,

For older people, climate change isn’t too important. Whatever we see is just the beginning, not too severe, just a few more storms or a longer drought. For younger people this is a life or death issue, and once they understand it, they will vote for the party that will work to stabilize the climate before it’s too late. Other issues are important for the moment, climate change is important for as long as the planet lasts.

Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living in Louisville, Ky. Email sdu01@outlook.com.

From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2020

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