Millennials started getting the vote in 2000. Many crucial elections since then have been extremely close. They had the opportunity to have the decisive say in outcomes. How's their track record of choices working out?
Only a small fraction of Millennials would have been able to vote in 2000, and depending on your definition of the generation (stop date of '95 or '00) the full group either got to vote for the first time in the 2014 midterms or will get to vote for the first time in the 2020 elections.
Millennials have made up a smaller, but growing demographic since 2000. What about the other, larger demographics? If you wanted us to make better choices, you shouldn't have left us with the current problems without properly equipping us. Now we're trying to solve today's issues as best we can given our circumstances all while you complain and moan. A thank you is all you need to say, really. We're bailing out your lifestyle and voting choices of the past at the cost of our own. We don't always get it right, but we're learning fast. Just be sure to step aside when the time comes so we can actually make some meaningful change in the world.
> If you wanted us to make better choices, you shouldn't have left us with the current problems without properly equipping us.
We equipped you with the vote starting at age 18. Voting age was lowered from 21 in 1971. So you had a head start on many boomers and all the silent/greatest generations.
> Just be sure to step aside when the time comes so we can actually make some meaningful change in the world.
> Many crucial elections since then have been extremely close. They had the opportunity to have the decisive say in outcomes.
The one does not follow from the other. Even assuming that it's reasonable to consider a monolithic Millennial voting bloc, they may have been "extremely closely" outvoted.
"millennials continue to have the lowest voter turnout of any age group. Only about 46 percent voted in the last presidential election; compared to 72 percent of the Silent Generation" [1]
"This election [2016] was effectively decided by 107,000 people in these three states [MI, PA, WI]. Trump won the popular vote there by that combined amount. That amounts to 0.09 percent of all votes cast in this election." [2]
This is an important thing to bring up but from a different perspective. Most millennials didn't want either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the last election. That lack of choice should not be blamed on a generation when the Clinton campaign subverted the DNC (and hence the popular candidate) and Trump was an unknown wildcard in a long list of crusty GOP candidates.
In 2000, the millenial voting bloc would have been like 1% of the total US voting population. Are you seriously laying the blame on 18 years old and not the 19 to 120 year old that make up almost all the votes? Also decisive in what way? Between Bush and Clinton? Or Obama and McCain? Trump or Clinton? Republican or Democrat? Why didn't previous generations make the "decisive" vote? Seems like whichever side you vote for, things don't get any better. Wars don't stop. And the rich get richer. But yes, lets blame those pesky 18 years old of 2000. Also, are millenials supposed to vote as a unit? I thought we were all individuals.
> In 2000, the millenial voting bloc would have been like 1% of the total US voting population
The presidential election that year was decided by less than 600 votes.
> Why didn't previous generations make the "decisive" vote?
Previous generations did make the decisive vote, in their favor. Millennials turn out to vote at the lowest rate of any age group, and so have missed their chances to be the deciders.
> Also, are millenials supposed to vote as a unit? I thought we were all individuals.
Millennials might be expected to vote their self-interest, in the aggregate. The linked article suggests the possibility that they could have done a better job at that.
> Millennials turn out to vote at the lowest rate of any age group
Probably not any more, since the subsequent generation can now vote and is fully within, while leading edge Millenials are out of, the 18-29 age group that has consistently been the lowest turnout age group. People are so used to conflating “Millenial” and “young adult”...
"millennials continue to have the lowest voter turnout of any age group. Only about 46 percent voted in the last presidential election; compared to 72 percent of the Silent Generation" [1]
Yes, from 2016 and using a definition of Millenials that went through 1998, so that “Millenials” was the age group including 18 year olds. (Which, if you click through to the cited source, you'll find out that the source has been revised to change.)
This is just restating the long established trend, true across generations, that the youngest-voting age group turns out at the lowest rates (it would be interesting, perhaps, to compare Millenials against other generations voting patterns at the same age to separate out generational from age trends, but this is just misattributing a consistent age trend to the generation that happens to be in an age category at the time of the analysis.)
The first presidential election boomers were eligible to vote in was 1968. Turnout among 18-24 year-olds was over 50%. Similar rates in 1964 and 1972. [1]
> The first presidential election boomers were eligible to vote in was 1968.
1964, actually, but only in Georgia. (Georgia lowered voting age to 18 in 1943, well ahead of the 26th Amendment.)
> Turnout among 18-24 year-olds was over 50%.
There were like four states with a voting age lower than 21, and only one with 18. And it was the height of the Vietnam draft (hence the renewed push for lowering voting age, which had its first big—but nationally unsuccessful—push during WWII.)
So, you've got both external conditions motivating elevated youth vote and stats skewed so that the youngest part of the 18-24 range is underepresented in eligible pool, so it's mostly reflecting the 21-24 subset. But even with all that, and it may not be a big distortion: it's still the worst age group for turnout in those elections, and the movement between and immediately after those years follows general turnout the same way it does through the Gen X periods to the (relative) youth voting surge in 2004-2008, which seems to have subsided in 2012.
