Something you’ve probably heard by now is that the Republican Party’s decision to decimate reproductive rights—and celebrate the overturning of Roe v. Wade like it was the greatest thing to ever happen to America—has not gone over great with voters. The 2022 midterm elections, which were supposed to be a red tsunami for the GOP, were anything but: Democrats picked up a seat in the Senate and Republicans just barely took back the House, with voters in critical states citing abortion as the most important issue of the day. A year later, the right to an abortion was enshrined in Ohio’s state constitution; Kentucky voters reelected pro-choice governor Andy Beshear; and Democrats took control of Virginia’s state legislature, preventing the GOP governor from limiting abortion moving forward, which he’d planned to do. The results were unambiguous: The American people want abortion rights.
Now, with the 2024 election less than a year away, what are Republicans running for higher office to do? According to GOP strategist and Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, the answer is simple: make their campaign slogan something like, “Yeah, we took away your reproductive rights, but, hey, we’re letting you keep contraception, and that’s something!”
The number is 10k per day.
I did the math a few years ago because I couldn’t find anyone else who had published it. This is rough and IANAM (mathmagicman).
Every single day 8,000 boomers and above die, and 12,000 people turn 18 and those numbers are actually accelerating. If you use existing data to estimate conservative/liberal and likely voters within those groups it works out to a delta of 10,000 per day on a national scale. That’s 5,000 votes switching every single day. That might not seem like alot. Because it really isn’t. Out of 155 million votes cast, 10,000 is .006 percent. But here’s the thing. It’s cumulative. And it just doesn’t stop. It is relentless. it’s 300k a month, 3.6 million per year. And that pace is accelerating. Between 2020 and 2024 it’s a 15 million vote difference. By 2028 it’s 30 million. It used to be that people age into conservatism. But that is not happening with millennials. The demographics are changing, and changing quickly. The most conservative group in the country is dying. While the most liberal group is rising.
We just have to hold on to democracy for a few more years. This will all be behind us. Another 10k today.
This isnt even factoring in the mass extinction event that was the covid pandemic. At first it hit everyone equally but once the vaccine came out and they decided to die on their stupid little hill the numbers skewed disproportionately towards the unvaccinated being the ones impacted in subsequent waves. We have confirmed this now in a few studies and I saw it first hand working in the emergency department.
That absolutely accelerated the trend you’re describing and I think they are just now realizing that the maga train is careening towards its demise and their bold strategy to worship a conman is going to cost them everything.
This year will be the final deciding factor on that. If we can rid ourselves from trump we can prove that there is still hope for this nation. I’m not so naive to think that there won’t be a new conman to take his place and we won’t find ourselves in an endless fight. But if we can’t stop trump and he somehow gets back in power then there’s absolutely no hope for this nation.
I completely agree. And although some polls indicate Trump strength, Biden hasn’t begun yet. The campaign hasn’t started. When it does, I really think it’s a clear Trump defeat.
And that doesn’t even take into account how polling landlines introduces a huge sampling bias. I have my cell phone set on do not disturb unless you’re in my contact list. Most tech savy people don’t answer unknown numbers.
They know it. The powers that be realize Trump is unelectable.
I love the math, but this assumes that all people vote. And we know Republicans have been attacking the voting rights of people for decades now and that too is accelerating.
They have to cheat to win even now.
They literally started their math is based on voting population in their post. Sure, this doesn’t account for cheating, but the Dems are also making headway on minimizing gerrymandering in a lot of swing states.
Not to mention, gerrymandering straight up stops working once the demographics are so skewed that it can’t compensate for them any longer. I just hope we can keep this place a (small-d) democracy long enough for that to happen.
Potential problems with your theory are that old people voting percentage isn’t way higher than young people and that people tend to get more conservative as they age.
The boomers were the ones out protesting the Vietnam War and fighting for civil rights. Now they are the establishment and behaving the same as those who they protested in their youth.
Hopefully, the batshit craziness will die down, but there will be new conservatives to replace the ones who die off.
People tend to get more conservative as they gain wealth and have something to conserve, hence that trend not continuing for millennials as of yet
This is the real answer. And it makes sense too. Also, your formative years impact your beliefs. Gen X is increasingly conservative, even though they’re stuck in the same crap as millennials. They grew up in the “greed is good” 80s.
Notice how millennials are the least conservative generation by far? That’s what comes from being shit on by the economy for years.
people tend to get more conservative as they age.
My father has been telling me this for decades. When I was 18, he said that I’d become a conservative at 21. In my 20’s, he said I’d become a conservative in my 30’s. In my 30’s, it was in my 40’s. Now that I’m 48, he says that I’ll become a conservative “when I get older.” (I guess he got tired of updating the date.)
Meanwhile, if anything, I’m getting more liberal. If you asked me in 2010 about gay marriage/marriage equality, I probably would have answered “marriage is for men and women, gay people should be allowed to have civil unions, though.” Obviously, that’s not my current position. Now, I think any two consenting adults should be allowed to marry (with very few exceptions - e.g. cases of incest). I didn’t get more conservative as I aged, I got more liberal.
Furthermore, if people get more conservative as they age, how does one explain Bernie Sanders?
Yes, some people get stuck in the past and can’t keep up, but there isn’t a hard and fast rule that says people move to the right as they age.
The boomers were the ones out protesting the Vietnam War and fighting for civil rights. Now they are the establishment and behaving the same as those who they protested in their youth.
Neither of my parents did. Same goes for my step-father, even though he was a self-proclaimed “hippy” as a young man.
A lot of those neo-progressive protesters didn’t survive / keep voting rights into the 2020’s for various reasons, intentional & otherwise.
and that people tend to get more conservative as they age.
I don’t think that’s particularly accurate. I don’t think people radically change their political ideology after reaching adulthood. Rather, the political spectrum shifts around them.
I would say that today’s progressives are yesterday’s radicals, and tomorrow’s conservatives.
I like to think we have two progressive parties, just one is lagging the other by about 60 years.
This will all be behind us.
And then we’ll have new bullshit ahead of us.
Yes. We will go back to fighting about policy rather than the existence of democracy.
Oh, so it’s just back to the same bullshit from before. I should have expected that.
No we won’t. This is the end game. We’re 2 decades, conservatively, from the singularity. Everything could collapse at any time. Either one could happen next year, next decade, or never. One of those will happen within the lifetime of most people alive today
There is an end to the bullshit, and you’ll probably see it
