Winograd and Hais,
Millennial Makeover
I've belatedly read
Morley Winograd and
Michael D. Hais's book,
Millennial Makeover:
MySpace, YouTube, and
the Future of American
Politics, which is
available in a
post-election, paperback
version. Winograd and
Hais (fellows and
bloggers at NDN)
presciently predicted a
sharp Democratic turn in
American politics,
thanks to a new
generation of Americans
who were more likely to
vote and more aligned
with the Democratic
Party than their
predecessors. They also
advised exactly the kind
of campaign—with a
softer ideological edge,
heavy use of social
networking tools, and
promises of transparency
and participation—that
carried Barack Obama on
his improbable journey
to Washington. Obama won
by appealing to the very
values and preferences
that Winograd and Hais
detected among
Millennials; and young
voters were his
advantage from the Iowa
Caucus through Election
Day. I think John
McCain's loss was almost
inevitable, but Obama,
Clinton, or Edwards
could have won the
nomination. Obama took
it on the strength of
young voters.
We found similar
generational patterns to
Winograd and Hais in our
recent paper entitled
"The Millennial
Pendulum." Our paper
added one small
methodological
refinement—we tracked
political opinions over
time for several
cohorts—but didn't
provide much of a
literature review. Any
bibliography should
start with Winograd and
Hais.
Our work at CIRCLE is
complementary to
Millennial Makeover. We
are interested in the
policy opportunities
afforded by a new
generation that seems
more concerned about
equality than their
predecessors were. And
we are interested in all
young adults, including
college students at
institutions like Tufts,
which is a leader in
developing the civic
skills of active and
enthusiastic
Millennials. However,
our emphasis is somewhat
different. Winograd and
Hais are in the business
of predicting how
today's young people
will vote and otherwise
engage, and advising
older leaders on how to
engage them effectively.
If you are interested in
these questions, two
directions will seem
natural:
1. You will be
interested in changes in
majority opinions about
issues and political
parties by generation,
even if these changes
are fairly modest. The
political status quo of
2004 represented a
particular balance of
public opinion. If that
balance shifted by 5
percentage points, a
whole new period would
begin—as evidenced by
the strikingly new
priorities of President
Obama's budget. So if
Millennials are 10- or
15-points different from
Generation Xers in their
average political
opinions, the electoral
implications are
tremendous.
2. You will be
especially interested in
young voters, because
those who vote have much
more political influence
than those who do not.
To be sure, turnout
statistics are not
written in stone. We can
find ways to raise the
voting rate or to change
the demographic
composition of the
electorate. But some
groups are a lot easier
to mobilize than others.
For example, a majority
of young people never
attend college, and
their turnout rate in
the 2004 election was
just 34% (PDF)—more than
20 points below the
turnout rate of their
peers who had been to
college (even briefly).
So, for the purpose of
political strategy, it
makes sense to think of
the Millennials as
high-achieving,
college-attending, and
middle-class. That is
the group that will turn
up in November.
In contrast, we are
primarily concerned
about policies for young
people. We study the
quality, availability,
and distribution of
educational, civic, and
political opportunities.
From that perspective:
1. Differences between
the Millennials and
their predecessors look
much smaller than gaps
among Millennials. In
2006, youth (ages 19-25)
with no college
experience had a
volunteering rate of 8.3
percent, while their
contemporaries with
college experience
reported a rate almost
three times higher, at
24.4 percent. Likewise,
on "Super Tuesday" in
the 2008 presidential
primaries, the turnout
rate of college-educated
young adults was four
times higher than the
turnout rate of their
non-college peers. There
is a twenty-point gap
between the two groups
in newspaper readership.
Even union membership
(rare for all young
adults), is more common
for college-educated
youth.
There is also remarkable
stability from
generation to
generation. Only 7
percent of students from
the bottom quarter of
the income distribution
will obtain a bachelors
degree by the age of 26,
compared to 60 percent
of those from the top
quarter (PDF). A
family's class position
generally reproduces
itself. College
attendance rates have
not budged upward for 25
years. The proportions
of high school students
who fail reading and
math assessments are
almost identical to 1971
(according to an
instrument designed to
track changes). And at
the community level,
poor urban and rural
areas remain in the same
condition over time, or
have declined with the
loss of stable
blue-collar jobs.
2. Because the
distribution is so
unequal, our priority is
the one-in-three who do
not complete high school
during their
adolescence. This group
is under-sampled in
surveys, invisible to
market researchers, and
dramatically
under-served. Their
political clout is
small, and they know it.
(Their confidence is
terribly low.) But they
are numerous and there
is much that could be
done to improve their
situation.
These two tracks of
research are not
competitive, but can
inform each other. Good
policy requires
successful political
strategy; and it's a
smart strategy to
propose good policies.
For example, NDN
proposes that we invest
more in the computer
training of
working-class
Americans—an idea that
the President picked up
because it is both a
wise investment and
smart politics. I don't
think that the
Millennials who vote are
sufficiently aware of
inequalities in their
own age group, partly
because they attend
schools and colleges
that are more segregated
and stratified than was
the case in my youth.
The ones who are
discussing carbon
emissions on Facebook
have not even met their
peers who lack access to
computers. But their
core values are
egalitarian, and that
provides an important
opening for good policy.
