People's Theories about Gen X's Strange Political Preferences

 

 

Yesterday, I posted on social media the graph you see here. It shows current levels of support for the presidential candidates according to gender for Generation Z, Millennials, Generation X, and Baby Boomers. I asked folks reading the post for their theories about what is going on with Gen X, and got a lot of responses. So here is my report on what people had to say!

First, to summarize what this chart shows you: Millennials and Baby Boomers are nearly identical in their views, despite having a generation between them with different political preferences. About 70% of both Millennial and Boomer women support Harris, while only about 38% of men in those generations say they support her. That’s a striking binary gender gap of over 30 points. (The survey does not consider the preferences of nonbinary people.)

Generations Z and X show different patterns. Gen Z voters are in the youngest voting age bracket, and for decades voters in that bracket have held more progressive views than older generations. That’s true this year as well, but only because of a powerful preference among Gen Z women for Harris: almost 80% support her. Gen Z men, on the other hand, are breaking the pattern that has held for so long: they are not any more leftist than people fifty years older than they are. About two-thirds of them intend to vote for Trump. This leads to a gender gap of fifty points in Gen Z, which is extraordinary.

Then we have Gen X, second eldest of the four groups in the chart, whose voting patterns seem even stranger. (So that people don't get confused and start arguing about generation cutoffs, in these polls, voting age groups are broken up in ways that don't exactly line up with the usual year cutoffs for named generations in other contexts. In the poll graph, Generation X consists of people people aged 45-64. In other contexts, Gen X is defined as people born between 1965 and 1980, which means at the time of this writing they are 44-59. Now that is clear!) 

It is an oft-repeated truism in the US that as generations age, they get more conservative, so the oldest voters should be the most conservative ones. When young people want to mock their elders for holding anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs or for blaming people experiencing financial struggles for their situations, they eyeroll, “OK, Boomer.” But this framing is wrong! The most pro-Trump generation consists not of the Baby Boomers, but of Gen X. About 80% of Gen X men intend to vote for Trump—Gen X men have the inverse preferences of Gen Z women. And Gen X women’s poll responses are even more striking. We see the smallest gender gap in opinions among Gen X by gender. Now—don’t get me wrong—about 55% of Gen X women say they will vote for Harris. But given that we also know that there is a substantial gap by race, it’s reasonable to conclude (though I can’t see the full crosstabs) that white Gen X women are the one notable group of women who favor Trump over Harris today.

So: I asked, “What’s your theory about what is going on with Gen X politically (especially the women)?” And here’s what emerged from the many responses.

1.      Theory 1: Gen X is suffering economically, and wants to turn back the clock to the economy of the 1950s.

As a generic argument, I’m afraid the claim some commenters made that inflation explains Gen X’s atypical preferences doesn't hold up, because every non-wealthy American is feeling the pinch of rising prices, not just Gen X. Also, Gen X has lower educational debt than later generations, and its members are substantially more likely to have been able to afford a house, which has increased in value and built wealth for them, than Millennials or Gen Z. So Gen X is suffering less financial pain than younger generations, and should feel less urge than they do to go back in time economically to an era when prices were lower, housing more affordable, and wages (at least for white men) less unequal.

There are a couple of more specific economic theories that seem more plausible. They are interestingly gendered. One is the “sandwich generation” theory: that Gen Xers, especially women, are stuck having to provide support to both slow-to-launch children and to slowly-declining parents. This leads to tight finances and frazzles nerves. That is true! Though supporting MAGA and its patriarchal policies is unlikely to help with this in any practical way, it could be that Gen X white women are yearning to restore the Victorian-era pedestal on which white women (excluded from careers and political power) were placed, lauded as “the angel in the home,” and praised for their endless self-sacrifice in caring for their families.

On the men’s side, a theory is expressed that before Gen X, Baby Boomers were still a “family wage” patriarchal generation, in which a man was paid a salary sufficient to support an entire family (with a generous pension to follow), wives stayed home as caregiver/domestic laborers, and men had final decisionmaking power in the family. Then women wanting to enter the workforce combined with a corporate wage system requiring two adult salaries to maintain a comfortable lifestyle, and Gen X men saw their position as ruler of the roost swept away, as wage-earning wives ceased to defer to husbands, and the resented possibility of having a woman for a boss at work emerged. Hence masculinist grievance politics and a desire to return to the Father Knows Best vision of America appeals most to Gen X men, says this theory.

2.      Theory 2: Gen X is suffering the least economically, making them classic anti-tax Republicans.

This argument obviously conflicts with the one that holds Gen X to be suffering the worst economic pain. And it has a good basis in facts: members of Gen X are at the peak of their careers, as senior members of their institutions, making their highest salaries of their lifecourse. Furthermore, according to this theory of Gen X Republicanism, rather than needing more government support (as the Sandwich Generation Theory argues), Gen X needs government support least. They don’t generally have small children; they’re too young to be collecting Social Security; they are past the expenses of pregnancies but not yet facing the disabilities of age. So they feel like everyone else is mooching off of their labor and their taxes, and see government services in a negative light. This makes them “establishment” Republicans, eager to shrink taxes on their relatively substantial wealth.They may not actually care for Trump's culture war politics, but their economic self-interest matters more to them, and they will hold their nose and vote for him.

3.      Theory 3: Reagan Youth

This thesis holds that people imprint on the politics of their youth. Ronald Reagan was a president with star power when Gen X was young. Watergate happened before they were conscious, and faith in government and other institutions, while shaken, was way higher than today. Many idolized Reagan. Trump is another celebrity president, and Gen X was primed for this flavor of politician. He’s just the reality TV shock version instead of the silver screen awe version.

I’d add as a variation on this imprinting theory that a favorite pastime of Gen X (particularly those of the masc persuasion) in their 80s youth was watching WWE. Hulk Hogan was central to this world of faux-sport wrestling entertainment, and it’s no coincidence that we saw him at the Republican National Convention this year. Trump even did a WWE stint himself in 2007. And the MAGA style is powerfully reminiscent of WWE programming—instead of kayfabe we have fake news, and it’s all aggressive and outrageous soap-opera drama all the time, though now it has real-world effects.

4.      Theory 4: “Latchkey Kid” Trauma

This one is a psychological theory. It centers the assertion that Baby Boomers had stay-at-home moms to keep an eye on them and make them feel safe after school, but Gen X’s moms left for work, and this was before we developed widespread afterschool programs, or understood that kids feel unsafe, and are unsafe, when unsupervised. So Gen X kids were given a key to their homes, and let themselves in after school. But not having anyone home to make sure they were safe, or to notice if they didn’t come home on time because something bad had happened, traumatized Gen X kids and left them with lifelong feelings of fear and insecurity. People who are afraid vote for conservatives who promise to keep them safe, which explains the Republican lean of Gen X adults.

I’ll just note that that children in earlier generations were expected to self-supervise routinely. When the Baby Boomers were kids, they regularly played unsupervised, not just in the house, but riding their bikes all around town. Earlier generations of children in nonwealthy families routinely engaged in dangerous labor on farms and in factories to contribute to the family economy (as undocumented migrant children continue to do today). And there’s a popular critique of the contemporary supervisory parenting that Gen Z has experienced as overprotective and overscheduled—as “helicopter parenting” that prevents children from developing important life skills in self-management, self-entertainment, and dealing with making mistakes.

But that’s the Latchkey Kid theory: Gen X is the most frightened generation, desiring strong protectors in their leaders.

5.      Theory 5: The Masculinizing of Gen X  Women

This theory was a bit unclear to me, as it was stated universally: that women have become more masculine as they moved out of the home and into paid careers. That can’t explain why Gen X women would become more conservative than the Boomers and later generations of women more progressive instead. But I think we can put together an at least plausible thesis about Gen X. That would be as this generation was the one for which women working outside the home became normative, that that generation of women suffered in ways that later generations did not, because of the many barriers so many had to overcome. To overcome resistance, they had to adopt the work styles and presentations of the men all around them: they had to become, collectively, “one of the boys.” And this made them think politically more like men.

6.      Theory 6: Gen X Women Fear, or Fear Losing, their Husbands

According to this theory, it is feminine anxiety rather than masculine thinking that explains Gen X women’s conservatism. Proponents of this theory say that Gen X women vote so much more Republican than other generations, with the smallest gender gap, because they are most likely to vote as their husbands do (presuming they have one). One variant on this theory says that women in Gen X, which was young as the divorce rate peaked, feel the greatest anxiety about losing their husbands’ love and (financial) support and winding up divorced, so they vote Republican to please them. Another variant says that women in older generations are all more fearful of their husbands, because marriages were less egalitarian than today’s. But this latter variant can’t explain why heightened fear would be true for Gen X, but not the older Baby Boom generation, so the first variant would seem more persuasive.

7.      Theory 7: Knee-Jerk Rebellion and Proto-Edgelordism

According to this theory, Gen X members grew up prone to disdaining caring about anything. The Boomers’ Summer of Love was parental saccharine sincerity to sneer at. Gen X—framed again as latchkey kids who had to fend for themselves—learned to act tough and not show vulnerability. And they sneered at wusses who whined and cried about feeling sad. They were the original F-your-feelings generation. They did what they wanted to do, and if you didn’t like it, tough. They’d say things to offend you just for fun.

Politically, this theory says, Gen X adopted a cool pose, sneering at things or tearing them down. Political earnestness was embarrassing, begging for redress cringeworthy, and complaining about suffering would just get you bullied. So to be edgy, bring on the political accelerationism! Watching things fall apart doesn’t scare them, it’s entertaining! Burn it all down.

(There is no doubt that there are Gen X people, especially of a masculine mindset, with this attitude. But it’s the Rebel Without a Cause archetype—and that film was about Boomer youth. It may be inflected differently in different generations, but it is hardly unique to Gen X. Though I certainly agree Millennials didn’t invent jerks when they came up with the term Edgelord to refer to this sort of behavior online!)

8.      Theory 8: Education

This theory focuses on the tie between being college-educated and being socially progressive. Rates of college attendance have been constantly rising since 1960 (at least until the past few years). Thus, says this thesis, the younger the generation voting, the more their vote will lean leftward.

I do think it’s important we not naturalize the current college education/progressive link and view it as eternal. The data I’ve seen show that it wasn’t until 2004 that college-educated Americans switched from a majority voting Republican to a majority voting Democrat. That doesn’t change the generational pattern in voting that we see in the graph—it just means that college voters in older generations were both fewer and more conservative than those today. What remains unexplained is the fact that the Boomer generation votes less conservatively than the more-college-educated Gen X. But perhaps generational experiences with Viet Nam, the Civil Rights Movement, and Watergate counterbalance the lesser education of the Baby Boomers in establishing political preferences.

9.      Theory 9: Racism

This argument centers a basic fact: each generation of Americans since the 1970s has been less white. (Several factors explain this: family size shinking for all Americans, but most for white ones; the appeal of immigration dropping for Europeans but not others; increasing rates at which white people married partners who were not white.) Thus, the older the voting group, the whiter it is, and the more likely it is to resist ceding white social power to others. MAGA champions this resistance. Again, this doesn’t explain why the Boomer generation votes more progressively than the less-white Gen X. But again it’s possible that the timing of the Civil Rights Movement and hippie culture could have moved the Boomer generation to the left for life.

10.  Theory 10: Don’t Believe Poll Results

Adherents of this position chose to disbelieve that some or all of the patterns shown in the graph were real. There are a batch of variations on this theme. Often raised in these discussions is the impression that the failure of so many polls in 2016 to correctly predict that Trump would win was proof that all polls are pointless exercises that do not reveal empirical truth. Others brought up specific concerns. Perhaps the polls used landlines, and nobody but Boomers have those anymore. (In fact, 90% of the polls were conducted via cellphone numbers.) But who answers their cellphone, or foolishly clicks on links in random texts saying “Take this poll!”? It was posited that few GenXers would do that. But that would hold true even more for Millennials and especially for Gen Zeds. Members of Gen X grew up with landlines, and then had pre-smartphone mobile phones. Gen Xers remain more likely to answer their phones than later generations, so why would only the data for Gen X be affected, or skewed the most? Finally, some people worried about the graph presenting the data. Some said the chart was too confusing to read and not simple enough for them to understand. Another said it oversimplified things, displaying insufficient information, and needed to show other factors like education and race.

My conclusion would be that it’s very good that people are questioning issues with survey data collection! And it has indeed become much more difficult to conduct political polls—once almost everyone had a landline and answered it, while now people have cellphones and (with good cause!) view all calls and texts from people who are not known to them as to likely be some kind of dangerous scam. It’s been argued that to get high-quality polling data today, what we’d need to do is go back to the methods of a century ago, and send human beings out to knock on doors, carrying prominent ID badges with a number to call and QR code to scan to get verification of their status as legitimate pollsters.

But large polls conducted by reputable organizations like those that conducted the data reported in the graph here, that use statistical tests and corrections to best approximate representativeness, do show us patterns that call for explanation, despite the margin of error. So I was happy to have many social media friends respond to share their personal theories as they considered this interesting graph! And I have written them up into this report, because it’s important for us to see that while people may often avoid talking about politics in the public sphere today, folks are still putting admirable thought into trying to understand the social world around them.