Demographics of the 1980 election
I've read a number of times here on the DU lately that Boomers "elected Reagan", like many urban myths this one doesn't appear to be supported by the facts.
If you look at the age breakdown in voting at the site I have linked to below, the younger voters in 1980 went for Carter and Reagan in almost equal numbers while the older voters heavily favored Reagan.
The older voters in 1980 mostly being the Silent Generation and the Greatest Generation, not Boomers.
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/how_groups_voted/voted_80.html
It's also instructive to note that Liberals went heavily for Carter (67% to 27%) while Independents, ie pragmatic moderate centrists, went for Reagan (56% to 31%).
Another thing I find interesting about the 1980 election is the large skewing of the vote by income with the sub $15,000 group going for Carter and those making over $15,000 voting for Reagan. Over $50,000 went for Reagan 66% to 23%.
= new reply since forum marked as read
A large number of self-described Independents, that I've met, have seemed to me to be relatively low-information voters, often fairly disillusioned or downright cynical about politics and politicians, and often likely to make statements like "They're all full of ****" -- without giving much indication they know much about what's going on. In fact, the data (that I just located) suggests that the Republican party is bleeding membership disproportionately into the ranks of the Independents, so one should expect Independents to be more conservative than liberal: while it is true that Independents are rather more likely to describe themselves as "moderate" than as "liberal" or "conservative," they are also more likely to describe themselves as "conservative" than as "liberal." And this is reflected in what I've seen in my public contacts: in my experience, self-described Independents disproportionately push conservative knee-jerk solutions, like term-limits
And, from what they voluntarily tell me, a significant number of them seem not to vote regularly. I just now checked to see whether there's any data to support this impression of mine -- and there is:
... while 80% or more of Democrats and Republicans claim they will definitely vote, only about two-thirds of independents agree. In short, while independent voters are valuable because they are not as anchored in their vote choice as are core Republicans and Democrats, they are less valuable because they are less likely to vote ...
Thursday, April 26, 2012
The Importance of Turnout
Independents, of course, are not a homogeneous group: persons disaffected from existing political parties come from across the political spectrum
There were a lot of factors that went into that result:
age demographics as you've shown,
regional demographic changes
political marketing techniques (e.g., the Southern Strategy)
shifts in campaign finance making themselves felt
a variety of economic issues
And many more.
The death of Ed Koch some months ago reminded us that he and a potion of Jewish voters thought the Camp David accords were a bad deal for Israel - plus some things Carter had said - and considered Carter to have harmed Israel so they didn't vote for Carter. That probably wasn't a deciding factor all by itself, but it was another straw on the camel's back.
Reagan had an uptick in the polls at the end of October, not only after the "There you go again" debate (a point conservatives like to highlight) but also the timeframe where it became clear there wasn't going to be an "October Surprise" (at least on Carter's part) agreement for Iran to release the embassy hostages.
I find that singling out particular groups to blame for Reagan's election ("Boomers elected Reagan", "the Kennedy primary challenge got Reagan elected"
smack more of personal grudge-nursing and axe-grinding (or simple myopia) than analysis. Rule of thumb: anyone who talks of the 1980 election without giving a prominent place to the words "hostage crisis" is not actually talking about that election.
As for the Anderson factor, here's what the electoral map would have looked like if every Anderson voter had gone to Carter. Carter would have had to have flipped several additional states to have won an electoral majority. The only factor that might have shifted the vote that much would have been an end to the hostage crisis.
