2024 will be the realigning election of our lifetimes

[Virginiá]

2024 will be the age generation tipping point where millennials and later are undoubtedly the biggest generation to vote.

Remember, people who are slightly older than millennials - those who are around 35-45 now - are almost as liberal as millennials on social issues.  So you couple them with the millennial generation and you have a very clear majority of the electorate.

By 2024 EHarding will have perfected a game-changing invention to keep the GOP in power: reanimate the dead and usher them to the voting booths in November. I hear the undead are severely conservative nationalists.

[insert Illinois dead voter joke by EHarding]

[Virginiá]

Why would Democrats be perpetually losing Pennsylvania and Michigan again?

[Virginiá]

That's going to turn off millennial and post-millenial Philly area swing voters.

At any rate, 2024 is generally when I have considered it a cut-off time for the GOP - where if they haven't made significant progress with either generation z and minorities, that even the more generous numbers just don't add up for them. Democratic performance among Millennials is very consistent and very deep, and future generations are only getting more diverse. In the end, Democrats will likely be pulling in much larger margins among <50 age group than Republicans will among the >50 group. However, I think the change will probably mean more in Congress/state legislatures than the electoral college, it's still hard to tell what happens when the GOP base becomes a distinct minority on that level.

And this will have been a long time coming too. The GOP has had their time - for like 2 generations now. That some people think that will last forever in the face of a clearly changing political landscape is beyond me.

[Virginiá]

In terms of tangible benefits from their recent, hard-won majorities, it is little, but also remember that since Reagan the GOP has fundamentally moved the overton window to the right so in general, policy making in this country has taken on a more conservative bent. While many conservatives see Obama's agenda as "outrageously liberal," it really was not in many areas - at least based on what he did/tried to do. If they thought that was bad - they will probably have heart attacks with future unified Democratic governments.

At least the next 2 years (but maybe 4) are going to be where all the GOP's awful work burning down our system for political power comes to fruition. This is their window. If they screw it up and Democrats take back the House (somehow),, then it's over for Trump's presidency. I also believe there is a good chance they lose the presidency in 2020 and, at least imo, that will probably be the end of the conservative era in America - for a time, anyway.

Funny enough, sort of like Virginia Republicans (albeit lesser in severity), since the GOP realigned the country, they haven't really had many years to go "full conservative." Most of the time Democrats have controlled the presidency or one or more chambers of Congress and prevented them from being able to do anything substantial. This is quite a contrast to the New Deal era. Although, then again, I guess everyone's idea of "substantial" varies.

[Virginiá]

Do you have a link to the thread where you wrote the timeline?

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=251989.0

[Virginiá]

Anyone who thinks the GOP will just die (both in Congress and in presidential races) because of how millennials vote has learned nothing from this election.

You're the only one who said that. What is actually being discussed here is a pretty constant theme for both parties throughout American history.

[Virginiá]

Can someone explain to me why millennialis won't trend right like the boomers before them? The boomers were a very liberal generation until recently after all.

Because the "trend conservative/Republican as they age" idea is a myth that refuses to die. Baby boomers gave Reagan major support in their youth (Obama-like margins in 1984, and Bush1 won 18-29 year olds by 6 points) and have tended to lean Republican most of their lives (yes, there are plenty of exceptions but that is what they are - exceptions, not the rule). There are parts of the boomer generation that aren't as conservative/Republican, particularly those whose views of the GOP were crafted by Nixon, but most of that generation has not voted in ways that would suggest it was "very liberal."

Further, Millennials and generations after it are more and more diverse, and Hispanics/African Americans have shown consistently high support for Democrats, meaning the Millennial+ vote will be more inelastic until Republicans can manage to broaden their tent.

[Virginiá]

And for the record, a realignment of the sorts here doesn't just mean presidential. No change in the political landscape is that limited. And when I think of a realignment, I don't think of "20 years straight of a Democratic president." There is nothing barring a Republican from winning during that time, and in all reality one probably would. The deeper effects are a change in long-term majorities straight down to the state level, and the general shift in policy over the following decades. I don't have exit polls per Congressional district, but assuming Democrats prevent another redistricting rout, I'd say the odds that the House advantage flips sometime over the next 15 years are significant. The GOP House advantage is not that big. Without the egregious gerrymandering from 2010 it'd likely be no larger than it was in the early 2000s, which is small and vulnerable.

But in the end, I don't think people TNVol look at politics that way anyway. From what I've seen, he probably assumes the Republican Party will fill in the gaps as they go along and generally assumes the status quo will stay the status quo until it no longer isn't, which imo is a very dull way of looking at things, but to each their own.

[Virginiá]

I don't have the patience to deal with you today.  Another time.

-See? None.

I don't know whether you get this or not, but you annoy a lot of people on here. That someone doesn't want to discuss something with you any longer is not by any means "evidence" of your side of the argument. You have a hard-headed, tedious and somewhat negative nature to you that doesn't exactly invite friendly discourse.

As for the question, polling data has shown voters growing up under Nixon to be notably less Republican than those under Ford/Carter.

As for party systems - there is no concrete length and there are not enough of them for anyone to say without a doubt what the standard length is. If 2024 was a year where a realigning event was most apparent, then the Reagan era would have been about as long as the New Deal era.

You can do your own reading on this - perhaps with an open mind, instead of nitpicking at everything here with short answers that add virtually nothing to the conversation.

[Virginiá]

-People born in the early Eisenhower years (the strongest age demographic for McGovern) are in their early 60s today. The exit polls are not consistent with this being a Dem-leaning age group.

Except 60+ would be over 20 years worth of voters (depending on how many >80yr voters you take into account), while Nixon served for what, 5 and a half years?

Of course analyzing limited polling data for such a small slice of the electorate would be error-prone, so you can go with that if you want. Doesn't change the differences to the Ford/Carter years and then the Reagan years as well, though.