Discovery Tackles Young Voters

The Discovery Channel YouTube channel Why? Tell me Why? Addressed the question of why young voters vote the way they do and old voters vote the way they do.

Irwin Morris from the University of Maryland says these are tendencies that develop depending on the political environment. Young people have come of age in an era with unpopular Republicanism thus they are more inclined to harness those anti-republican sentiments and carry them with them throughout the course of their lives.

The same is/has been true for older voters who he said came of age in an era of anti-democratic tendencies which is why they lean more toward republicans. This might also account for the messages republicans used nearing election day about communism and socialism etc... because those were real threats that older voters faced when they were first beginning to cast ballots.

These kinds of arguments of course flopped on young voters who only know about socialism within the context of republican finger pointing and communism with regard to Cuban relations or history classes about the former Soviet Union.

With "reliable seniors" as a major voting demographic in the past, this was a good strategy, but as we saw with the new data, young voters surpassed those seniors in turnout and at least a third of the seniors voted for Obama.

My hope is that this means we are finally beyond the idea that crying "socialism" and "communist" are helpful to a campaign.