According To A Reuters Poll, Democrats Are Losing Ground With Millennials

While that may seem like tremendous news, it really shouldn’t be so unexpected. And neither should another shift towards more Millennials backing Democrats in the future. Why? Because people always change their minds and their memories are very short.
 
But before we get to that, let’s look at the actual numbers provided by the Reuters/Ipsos poll.
 
“In the last two years, Millennial support for Democrats over Republicans on the generic congressional ballot dropped around 9 percentage points, to 46 percent. The demographic’s support for Republicans has remained steady at about 28 percent… Some Millennials who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 are now looking at supporting GOP congressional candidates, the poll found. And the same young voters are almost evenly split on the question of which party takes better care of the economy, with 34 percent favoring Democrats compared to 32 percent favoring Republicans… White Millennials have turned towards Republicans the most. Support for both parties among young white voters is equal at 39 percent. This marks a big shift from 2016, when white Millennials supported Democrats over Republicans 47 percent to 33 percent.”
 
That is an awful lot of information, but it’s mostly good news, considering things. This data shows that people, at least Millennials, are taking notice of the good things the President and the GOP are doing for the country.
 
Yahoo News shared the story of Terry Hood, a 34-year-old African-American in Louisiana. According to Yahoo News, Hood voted for Clinton in 2016, but “he will consider a Republican for Congress because he believes the party is making it easier to find jobs and he applauds the recent Republican-led tax cut. ‘It sounds strange to me to say this about the Republicans, but they’re helping with even the small things… They’re taking less taxes out of my paycheck. I notice that.’”
 
While the Democrat Party has tried to demonize the tax cuts, reality is far different and people notice that.
 
Now, while this is good news, we should also take things with a grain of salt. People change their minds all the time.
 
Charles Cooke from National Review puts it best: “[the Reuters poll] demonstrates that our politics remains as fluid as ever… In [their] view, all progressives have to do in order to take and keep power is wait for their opponents to die. In this view, conservatism is the philosophy of the old and the white and the male, and, as America becomes more brown and the elderly slowly disappear, so too will their creed. Young people tend to be Democrats, and so do non-whites. Before long, then, a supermajority is surely inevitable… The problem with this view is obvious: Namely, that both people and circumstances change.”
 
“This concept is all too often lost on the political press, which has a terrible habit of assuming that what is true now will be true forever more. In 2004, Bush’s winning strategy was destined to marginalize the Democrats for a generation. That, quite obviously, didn’t happen. In 2008, Barack Obama’s massive victory spelled the end of the GOP and the death of conservatism. That didn’t happen either. And why would it? Just four years elapsed between Goldwater’s blowout loss and Nixon’s winning the White House in ’68. There was only six years between Watergate and Reagan’s first victory. Just two years sat between the financial meltdown of 2008 and 2010’s blowout GOP mid-term victory. In 2014, Millennials shifted away from the Democrats. In 2016, they went back. Now, they’re losing interest again.”
 
This is very important to note because it personifies numbers. What I mean by that is that when people look at polls, all they see is numbers, not the people behind them. And people, as I’ve said, change their minds all the time.
 
Is it surprising that young people tend to be Democrats? Absolutely not! Democrats appeal to feelings, emotion and a skewed sense of right and wrong that gives people false hope about the future. Because that is essentially all young people have: a future. What happens today often will have a significant impact in the future. Obama absolutely owned “hope” and the results showed at the polls.
 
Similarly, as a Millennial, hope for the future is one of the biggest things for me in my life. But I also know that the Democrat Party is not the party of hope, but destruction, hate, and victimhood. Granted, the current GOP leadership (meaning the establishment) has soured me on the idea of identifying myself as a Republican. But I still do, largely because I believe in the country’s and Party’s founding principles of conserving the good while moving forward towards more liberty for all of God’s children.
 
I’m not likely to ever change my mind about the kind of people I support, but in that regard, I’m not like most people. As you can very clearly tell, politics are a very large part of my life. While I don’t ever plan on running for office (lower than President, of course, being a naturalized citizen), who is representing me and my beliefs is a big deal. Currently, Donald Trump represents most of my beliefs, and thus, he’s not likely to lose my vote unless he betrays his base and agenda.
 
But for most people, politics aren’t such a big part of their life, at least actively. According to Reuters, the Democrats held a massive lead with Millennials against Trump and that lead has largely disappeared. But that is not indicative of a permanent cultural shift.
 
Like Charles Cooke said, events that looked devastating for a political party ended up meaning next to nothing eventually. Goldwater’s loss to LBJ was huge, but Nixon still won eventually. Nixon’s Watergate scandal was devastating for his presidency and career, and is still talked about today (mostly by the Left who wish to make a repeat of it with Trump), but Reagan still obliterated Carter not long after and won by an even bigger margin in his reelection.
 
Obama’s victory was seen as the death of the GOP and conservatism, but they won majority of Congress just two years later.
 
The American people, in each and every significant election, has shown to have changed their minds at one point or another and changed them back.
 
And, furthermore, the fact that Millennials change their minds too is both unsurprising and a good sign for the future. In case you’ve forgotten, back in March, I shared a story about a USA Today poll showing that young people aren’t as keen on gun control as you might think. And according to The Guardian, a Quinnipiac poll finds that “Americans aged 18-34 most likely to oppose assault weapons ban.”
 
So while the Millennial generation tends to be more liberal, they are seemingly relatively conservative, at least compared to older generations, regarding gun control and an assault weapons ban.
 
I won’t go into too much detail about the gun control issue, but the reason I share this is because it’s important to point out that Millennials are people too, and, for the millionth time, people always change their minds.
 
So while today, Millennials are shifting away from Democrats, that doesn’t mean it will remain that way. But it’s important to highlight the reasons for such shifts. For one, Trump and the GOP have severely cut taxes and regulations that have massively helped the economy. Two, the Democrats have been showing their true colors and exposed themselves as hateful of everything that isn’t like them. Despite the fact that Trump is doing a great job for the country, the Democrats want to take it all away just because they don’t like Trump and they think he shouldn’t have won.
 
What that Reuters poll tells us is that Millennials change their minds too. It’s important to restate this because Millennials are one of the younger generations of people old enough to vote at this point. Being young, they (we, as I am also a Millennial) lack wisdom and experience. The Democrats tell Millennials what to think, feel and believe, and so, they do. Simply because they don’t really know much better.
 
Democrats constantly make promises they can’t deliver and young people vote for them because they haven’t seen for themselves what rotten garbage the Democrat Party is. Like Winston Churchill said, if you’re not a liberal at 20, you don’t have a heart. If you are not a conservative at 40, you don’t have a brain.
 
What he means, obviously, is that young people base their decisions more on emotions and not logic or wisdom. Part of that is because they are not old enough to be considered “wise”. Even I could not claim to be wise since I still have my entire life ahead of me. As a conservative Millennial, I could say I’m more logical and informed, but not wise, for wisdom comes with experience. Beyond a few years of Obama’s 2 terms and Trump’s first term, I don’t have much experience in the realm of politics.
 
I’m not old enough to remember Bush (I was also in a different country during his presidency, so that is a factor) and not old enough to remember all of Obama’s administration. All I know is that Obama was a commie, his policies reflected as much, and that Trump is, in my mind, comparable to my idea of Ronald Reagan.
 
But most people my age don’t think the way I do. They tend to think more with their feelings, which is not really thinking at all. What that Reuters poll shows us is that, really, Millennials are no different to any other generation’s young people. Democrat-leaning in the beginning, but their minds can be changed.
 
Proverbs 2:6
“For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.”