Yep, it’s true. There’s an invisible predator in the GOP’s midst, sharpening its claws and ready to pounce on the GOP in November. And it’s not like this should be a shock, it’s going to be the 3rd straight cycle i9t’s ravaged them. But the GOP seems as blissfully clueless as their nimrod prophet.
Anti gun activists like David Hogg are fond of repeating one simple statistic, Every single year, approximately 45 million children turn 18 and are eligible to register to vote. The simplest math tells you that’s about 8 million potential new voters every 2 year cycle.
And here’s the kicker. They’re totally invisible. They’re highly unlikely to be polled, since most pollsters get their survey pool from registered voters on the rolls of the state. And these kids aren’t on yet, and if they come on off year, they won’t be polled because they have never voted. But they’re there.
An they’re as motivated as hell. Starting with the March For Our Lives movement following the Parkland school shooting, 18-25 voters turned out in record numbers to turf out NRA friendly GOP incumbents, helping to fuel a 40 seat flip on the House. And they were back in similar numbers in 2020, helping to propel Biden to the White House, and letting the Democrats retake control of the Senate. And now, fueled by the Uvalde atrocity, and GOP intransigence, they figure to be out in full fury again this November, now fueled by the global warming crisis as well.
Without turning this thing into a high school math textbook, here’s why this is so potentially important. There are 435 House districts in the US. If you take 8 million new voters in a 2 year period, and divide it by 435, you end up with about 18,300 new voters per district. Considering the fact that the average district population is about 235,000 that means that every cycle about a 12% increase of first time voters hits the polls. Just ask yourself this question. When you’ve been sitting at home watching the election returns, how many times have you seen House districts decided by 10,000 votes or less? Yeah, me too.
Here’s the McGuffin. We all know that there’s no mythical Baby Guru floating around up there evenly delegating 18,300 newborns into each district equably. There will highly likely be far more first time voters clustered in the higher density urban, and more GOP friendly suburbs than in the cow county districts downstate. And that’s where GOP shortsightedness, especially in gerrymandering becomes potentially fatal.
As I’ve written in the past, in order to avoid court fights, the GOP historically gerrymanders at a 4-6% safety net. If 18,300 new voters is about 12% of the district, that’s enough to flip the swing district right there. And if these kids are working to convert their parents, it gets even worse. And in all of my years in watching and analyzing GOP gerrymandering, I have never seen anything that indicates that GOP lawmakers take new, young, first time voters over the next 10 years into their calculations.
And the news doesn’t get any better for the GOP when you zoom out from districts and look statewide instead. 8 million new voters every 2 years assays out to about 160,000 new voters every cycle. Gee, you think that 160,000 new voters can change the results of a statewide election, like governor, Secretary of State, US Senator, or US President? And once again, the bulk figures to be in the urban and suburban areas of the state.
Which plays right into the Democrats sweet spot. In 2020 they flipped Georgia by blowing the turnout doors off in heavily Democratic urban and college town areas, enough to offset the GOP’s advantage in the more rural, less populated areas. And the same thing in 2019, when Andy Bashear beat incumbent Matt Bevin to become Kentucky’s Governor. They overperformed in the urban and college towns, and GOP voting fell off in the more rural areas.
And Biden and the Democrats are certainly feeding the beast. The Democrats passed the first comprehensive gun control legislation in a generation. They passed the largest US investment in climate change and carbon emissions control in history. And Biden just took action to forgive $10,000 in student debt for moderate income families, $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients. And of course, the GOP, dumb as a box of rocks, is threatening to go to court to stop it.
There’s the Silent Predator hiding in the weeds, ready to pounce on the GOP in November. The Democrats realized early that the 18-25 vote is the strongest, most easily renewable source of votes there is. You just have to find a way to appeal to them. The GOP on the other hand sees them as nothing more or less than snot nosed brats. Don’t touch that dial.
All of the above is a sign of a message that the GOP has been resisting since 2008: it’s not your world anymore. Mind, it’s not mine either but then it never was. So I’m a little more used to being irrelevant because that’s the hole where they threw me. They are NOT going to like it there.
Do 8 million newly turned 18 year olds register to vote? That is the one demographic that seldom gets off its ass to do anything other than get a soda and plop back down to watch some mindless “reality” show. Give me a break. I would be tremendously surprised if 1 million of that 45 million even knew where they could register to vote let alone find their polling place.
Yes, there will be an increase in younger voters but nowhere NEAR what Mr. Math is spouting. I hope there will be enough to make a difference but that 18-25 demographic is more inclined to follow their own pursuits usually involving a cell phone, computer, tablet, whatever. Can you truly think that VOTING is going to pull them away from their little tik tok videos? Sorry man but the one thing I’ve seen over the years is that young adults have not, as a group, gotten any less self-centered than they were when I was 18, my niece was 18, my friends’ children/grandchildren….you get the picture.
I hope I am surprised and totally wrong about the 18 to 25 demo but it’s not very likely. When you have a large portion of your population unable to put their fucking phones down how in the hell do you figure they’re going to vote?
The simple question to your question is, YES!!! It started in Florida with Parkland, but the kids used their social media savvy to unite and mobilize nationwide…These oraanizations have national grassroots voter registration drives ahead of every election…They’re motivated Spike…
And when exactly was the last time you interacted with an 18 year-old, Spike? Judging by the above, I would posit your info is roughly two generations out of date. I would remind you that between 30 years of school shootings, 20 years of war, 10 years of economic instability and 2 years of plague, these are a far cry from the children you remember. Oh and there’s also that climate change thing which no Boomer is going to live long enough to see resolved.
I say this with love: think past your prejudices.
Spike, your perspective is exactly what is feeding the GOP short-sighted perspective. Lack of appreciation and respect for the new generation of voters is akin to acting like an ostrich. Get your head out of the sand and recognize this new generation is much more intelligent, involved, impacted and motivated by reality than any generation before them largely due to the technology you are denouncing. I have 3 children in the 18-25 group and they (along with ALL of their friends) are highly active, supremely motivated and outright pissed off at the state of the world and want change. Perhaps the members of the new generation you are sighting are influenced by others that are fighting reality, are afraid to share their true perspectve, or just kids from GOP families, but I assure you they are in the minority. Pay close attention to these “snot nosed kids” as you call them because they are making a difference and I couldn’t be happier or more proud!
Those are indeed the children I’m going to be stuck on this planet for at least another couple of decades, Golf. And they’re going to need more from me than my angry dismissal.
This is going to sound a little nasty and certainly colored by my personal history. But I want to be a better elder to these kids than 75 to 90 percent of the Boomers I ran into ever were to me. What we have facing us as a species calls for no less.
I work at a very large urban university. I walked through campus this week, there were thousands of students on campus again. voter registration drive is going on. first time in about 2 years. maybe 18-23 is getting activated.
“Considering the fact that the average district population is about 235,000 that means that every cycle about a 12% increase of first time voters hits the polls.”
I’m curious, Murf, but WHERE did you get that 235,000 figure? There is NO WAY that the “average district population” is anywhere that close to being accurate. The total population of the US was ~330 million as of the last Census figures. 330 million divided by 435 is 758,621 (rounded up). As for the “12% increase,” uh, not right. I don’t know how your math arrived at that figure but 18,300 divided by 235,000 results in 0.077872 which, expressed as a percent figure, is 7.7872% (or roughly 8% rounded up).
For what it’s worth, I should mention that the “potential 8 million new voters” won’t be spread evenly among the 50 states, much less the 435 House districts. Some states and districts will surpass that average and others will fall below it (that’s why it’s called an “average”).
Also, with that total population of 330-340 mil, 45 mil are not turning 18 every year so the math is unfortunately incorrect here.
We need ‘Democrats for the Constitution’ clubs in every county of the USA that are started by young people just out of high-school or still in high-school. I have made feeble attempts at this down here in Klan Land but have gotten little traction. I think too many in politics are unwilling to turn power over to the young and the free. If the young are not coming into power through a system they control, I fear whether Democrat or Republican they feel they ( the neophytes) should have no voice or power.
Are you familiar, Walter, with the Greek myth of Cronus, king of the Titans? For failing to deliver on a promise to his mother Gaia to release the more monstrous of his non-Titan siblings, Gaia declared that he would be dethroned by his own children. So he started swallowing up his kids the moment they were until finally his wife Rhea couldn’t bear it. When the latest child was born, she substituted a stone in his place and Cronus never noticed the difference. Rhea then took her son into hiding where he grew up.
That son incidentally was someone you may have heard of: Zeus, who did indeed dethrone his father after releasing his older siblings from Cronus’ stomach. And the older each sibling, the more they were marked by that horrific experience. For instance, Hestia came out as little more than flame, being the oldest, and Hades, the oldest son, never lost his place for dark, inaccessible places.
Ancient though this story is, a telling metaphor for our time, yes?
I see the russian financed GQP in about the same position that the so called russian army is in with their invasion of Ukraine, in November.
America does not like gutless nazis. The republiCLOWNS are DOOMED just like Nixon said….