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Young Voters, Taxes, and the Government

Submitted by Kristen Soltis on Wed, 04/15/2009 - 11:28

More numbers and great analysis from Kristen. As I've noted before, the message should focus on how government can facilitate economic growth through promoting freedom and equal opportunity, instead of relying on the simplistic "limited government" message by itself. -Matt Moon

Across the country today, conservatives, libertarians, Republicans and those concerned about taxes will gather for "tea parties" in protest over increased government spending and over taxes. After all, today is April 15th, tax day, and the tax issue proved successful for the Republicans in the 1990s; under a new Democratic administration, Conservatives are hoping that the tax issue can again be a winner.

Many in the GOP that I've spoken with are quite confident that, despite differences between the party and young voters on some social issues, young voters are far more libertarian on fiscal issues. The idea that young Americans are largely "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" is one that many Republicans hold on to as a hope that the these voters will reject big government spending, high taxes, "wealth redistribution" and expanded government programs and regulation.

On Monday, I posted about the divergence in attitudes toward homosexuality between younger voters and older voters. Indeed, the beliefs held by young voters on gay marriage and homosexuality also differ greatly from the position of the Republican Party, presenting a challenge to the party's ability to grow long-term. However, this was tempered with the reminder that issue salience is key; just because a group of voters disagrees with the GOP on an issue does not preclude those voters from voting Republican or becomingRepublican if the issue is not a high priority. While gay marriage may be important to many voters, one issue alone is unlikely to make or break a voter's decision to affiliate with a party unless that issue is clearly dominant in the issue mix.

So what issues are dominant in today's issue mix? The economy. Poll after poll has shown that Americans care about the economy as a top priority and the same is true of young votes. The Harvard Institute of Politics in April 2008 found that the economy was far and away the top issue to 18-24 year olds; 41% of respondents named it as one of the top two national issues that concerned them. And in today's public discourse, the economy has become inextricably linked to taxes and spending. Between TARP, the stimulus package and now the budget, national coverage of government efforts to repair the economy come down to issues of taxing and spending.

Unfortunately, as I noted on Monday, the Republican Party may have bigger problems on its hands in terms of reaching young voters that the differences on the issue of gay marriage. Fundamental principles of the Republican Party - smaller government, lower taxes - are not embraced by younger voters at the same level as voters overall. Fiscal conservatives and Republicans have quite a bit of work ahead for them in terms of winning young voters, as well.

Let's begin with the role of government overall. In a May 2008 national survey conducted by The Winston Group* for nonprofit New Models, respondents were asked if the believed the statement "Government should help people". To be sure, a high positive response rate was to be expected; even many serious libertarians can see a role for government in helping people in some limited cases. Sure enough, 79% of respondents believed the statement. Yet age was a significant factor in looking at responses to this question; 92% of those 18-34 believed the statement compared to 71% of those 65 and older. Younger voters are simply far more likely to believe the government has a role in helping people.

Then there's the issue of the efficacy of tax cuts as economic policy. In the aforementioned Harvard IOP study, when asked if they agreed or disagreed with the statement "The best way to increase economic growth and create jobs is to cut taxes.", some 36% agreed with the statement, 23% disagreed, and another 41% said they neither agreed nor disagreed. (Had I put together the questionnaire, I would not have used the same language; I likely would have changed "the best way" to "a good way", as the stronger language here I believe is responsible for the high "neither agree nor disagree" response.)

Looking at a question with a similar aim but different wording, the May 08 New Models study asked if respondents believed that "lowering taxes will benefit the economy". Some 60% of respondents overall believed it, as did 57% of voters 18-34 indicating that young voters do see the efficacy of tax cuts. However, the uncertainty shown in the responses to the Harvard IOP study shows that young voters are uncomfortable with the idea that tax cuts are the only answer or the best answer. While this should give heart to conservatives, it should also serve as a warning that there is work to be done if the right wishes to convince young voters that tax cuts are usually the best option.

Finally, and perhaps most troubling, the conservative notion that the free market tends to hold the answers is not as widely accepted by this new generation. In the May 08 New Models study, respondents were asked if they believed that "the free market is a better way to solve problems than the government". On the whole, the results supported the notion that America tends to be "center-right" - 56% believed the statement while 34% did not (10% did not know or refused to answer). Yet the trend among voters 18-34 was cause for concern - 46% believed the statement while 48% did not believe it. In this case, age was a statistically significant factor. All other age groups found more support for the free market than government.

So what do young voters think about government? Pew's values surveys have shown a shift in how young voters view government efficiency. In their 1987-88 and 2002-2003 studies, respondents were asked "when something is run by the federal government it is usually inefficient and wasteful". In the '87-'88 study, younger respondents were evenly divided with 47% agreeing and 47% disagreeing. Among those 26 and older, some 67% agreed while only 28% disagreed, showing an age gap and a more positive impression of the government among the young. Yet in 2002-2003, impressions of government were more positive overall, particularly among those 18-25. Only 32% of those 18-25 in the 2002-03 study agreed that the government is usually inefficient and wasteful, while 58% of those 26 and older agreed. While these numbers are a few years old, they show an important shift over the last two decades that deserves attention. In short, young voters have a more positive view of the government and its ability to handle responsibilities.

So where should the Republican Party or conservative movement go from here? There is a belief structure among young voters that is slightly in conflict with a core principle of the Republican Party - the belief that the free market trumps government. Young voters have a more positive view of government and are not as convinced that the free market provides better solutions than government.

Yet on the issue of taxes, young voters do believe tax cuts can improve the economy, despite their uncertainty about whether or not tax cuts are the best option. If the Republican Party wants to win young voters in the future, an understanding of the ways that young voters view the economy is essential. Messaging that focuses on the need for less government and lower taxes is not likely to be as well received or convincing to this generation. This isn't to say these messages won't work, to be sure. But the spectre of Big Government is not as frightening to young voters, nor is the devotion to the free market so prevalent. In order for the Republican Party to grow long-term, they must work to impact these belief structures and spend the effort convincing a new generation of the sorts of beliefs that are taken for granted among older cohorts.

 

(This item has been cross posted at Pollster.com)

*The Winston Group is the author's employer.

 

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Comments

A few points:

Submitted by RisingTide on Wed, 04/15/2009 - 12:42.

1. Yes, by gaw, tax cuts can stimulate the economy. NO, by gumby, tax cuts to the rich will NOT stimulate the AMERICAN economy. They'll stimulate the Chinese economy, instead!

2. No, tax cuts are not a republican "we want this"... it is the only plank on the republican platform that is remotely popular -- and thus is relentlessly pushed, even though the republicans have other goals that have high saliency to their leadership.

3. I'm seeing a long-term shift in how people percieve the government... not just young people. I'd say that some parts of government are inherently wasteful, and others are inherently lean. It depends on who you put in charge, mostly, and how institutionally invested they are in hierarchical environments (and how much they invest their entire worth based on how high up the ladder they are)

4. Statistically significant isn't precise enough. Can you give me a confidence interval on that?

Confidence interval

Submitted by Kristen Soltis on Wed, 04/15/2009 - 13:43.

On the "the free market is a better way to solve problems than the government" question, age was significant at the .05 level (95% confidence level).

thanks for getting back to me!

Submitted by RisingTide on Wed, 04/15/2009 - 13:46.

us stat nerds like the numbers. ;-)

Of course!

Submitted by Kristen Soltis on Wed, 04/15/2009 - 14:10.

I completely understand!  I left it out so as not to bog the piece down.  Oddly enough, when I ran the numbers on the "The government should help people", it came out significant at the 99% confidence level but with huge majorities believing the statement it seemed less important to point that out since the numbers themselves were pretty compelling.   

The tough part about looking at statistical significance too is people can confuse it with strength of association, so I almost just left it out entirely, but I'm glad there are a number of stats folks out there who both care and understand it!

Could you comment

Submitted by Jim Dandy to th... on Wed, 04/15/2009 - 19:48.

...on the recent poll that tells us that a MAJORITY now feels that we are taxed about the right amount??

That is maybe the final nail in the Right's coffin.  If the GOP only gets tepid responses when it waves the TAAX CUTS HERE!!  flag, where is it going to go?

Young Americans are far more astute and informed than ever before, and they understand what Obama has always told them:  It ain't gonna be easy, and it ain't gonna be cheap, and it's going to take awhile before things get better.

And they're OK with that.

Brand problem

Submitted by BWall on Wed, 04/15/2009 - 15:35.

Hi Kristen-

I'm new here, so pardon me for jumping in without a formal introduction or anything like that.  One significant problem that I see facing the Republican party with younger voters is that, frankly, we don't think of the Republicans and Democrats at being very different in terms of economic policy.  Most of us grew up with a Republican Congress from 1994-2006 and with President Bush, and we remember the gigantic amounts in earmarks and pork-barrel spending that those Congresses consistently passed.  It seems to me (and many of my friends) that Republicans only complain about out-of-control government spending when they are out of power; otherwise, they can't resist growing the size of government as much as they can.  Maybe this is unfair, and if there is evidence to the contrary I would love to see it, but most of the evidence that I've seen does indicate that the Bush administration and the Republican Congresses acted like Democrats usually do when they are in power.  

In my mind, then, the real problem isn't so much that voters don't identify with fiscal conservatism, it's that we don't trust Republicans to be any more fiscally conservative than Democrats are.  In that case, that is removed as a voting issue and we are left to consider other criteria like social issues where, as you mentioned in your post, young people tend to agree more with Democrats.  

WHO doesn't spend?

Submitted by skayne on Wed, 04/15/2009 - 16:03.

 

Why this persistent myth that conservatives in power don't spend?  Our debt problem started with Regan, who spent billions on what conservatives love most:  the military industrial complex, and tax cuts for the wealthiest few. 

Because of his folly, he raised taxes not once but Twice!!  And he raised taxes in a recession, something the right claimed would be totally irresponsible if Obama raised the top marginal tax rate when he first got in office.

Our record is responsible for our troubles with youth cohort

Submitted by johnson springs on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 08:49.

Our core values were tested by dominant GOP control of the federal government during the Bush years and they failed. They failed either as policy (Iraq) or they failed as values (government spending and debt grew wildly under Bush giving the lie to our small government "values").

The youth cohort we find disfavoring us came of age during these failures and will therefore be largely immune to the failed promises that brought us to power in the 90's and 00's. We need to prove our commitment to our own principles before we can expect them to buy our messages.

Any conservative who thinks we can simply turn the page on our failures to live up to faith the American electorate placed in us over the last 15 years is part of the problem not the solution.

agree here.

Submitted by RisingTide on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 09:22.

Competency and Values. Sounds like an actual plan ;0)

In other words

Submitted by Cahnman on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 10:30.

Obama has all of the Negative Aspects of 43 with none of the positive.

You got what you wanted

Submitted by skayne on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 10:37.

Conservatives got everything they wanted with W.  Conservative values are exactly what you got for eight years.  Why do conservatives try to pretend they don't support Bush?  His overall approval rating was rock bottom with dems and indies, strong with conservatives. You pretend conservatism was led astray because it's now lost popular support.

He cut every tax he possibly could, he fought a war you championed, claimed broad powers that you said he deserved, and fed the beast known as the military industrial complex.

The small government mantra was a hoax started by Regan, which he nor his successors lived up to.

Big government versus big business

Submitted by Malevolence on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 19:57.

This analysis ignores an important reality of our evolving economy, which is the proliferation of big business. It's hard to rally support against big government when often times the only alternative is big business that suffers from the same inefficiencies, bureaucracy and waste that government is accused of (and is also willing to outsource it to India). For example, when Reagen was in office, health insurance providers were still smaller local providers who didn't spend a full half of the money spent on health-care on paperwork. So the idea that big government would be wasteful had some salience in the discussions being had at the time. People were afraid that the big government would come in and mess up a system of small providers and add massive bureaucracy, exactly like the insurance giants have. And regardless of if you agreed or disagreed with this philosophy, this was perfectly valid and debatable concern. After years of mergers and acquisitions, this is no longer the case. Republicans are trying to argue against one thing while only offering something else that is essentially the same. It isn't 1980 anymore. Republicans offering big business Coke as an alternative to big government Pepsi doesn't really make much sense to young conservatives that want Sprite. So basing a party platform on this outdated idea is not going to attract new voters. While we could theoretically return to a system of small independent insurance providers, that would only happen if there is government regulation to force it to happen. But no government regulation is another staple of the party platform. The clear contradictions in the Republican Party platform need to be resolved before there's any hope of attracting a populous that has immediate access to so much information. This applies to more than just the insurance industry. We've seen what the hands-off approach did to the financial sector, and it's not pretty. The pundits on TV and the radio can keep claiming that all business is Sprite, but younger voters get on the internet and see that it clearly isn't.

 

The Republican Party has set up their own straw-men to be blown down by the internet. In an age where Walmart has a bigger economy than several states, it's hard to argue that big government is somehow more evil than big business. If you keep running on the Reagen philosophy that "if the government gets out of the way, Entrepreneurs will be able to thrive," when the reality on the ground is anything but that, you're not going to win any hearts or minds. Nobody is setting up a mom and pop insurance shop. We aren't going to return to a time where there was no internet and no cheap airfare, where most businesses outside of steel and oil were local. That idea was arguably outdated 30 years ago, and it definitely is today. The advantages to businesses getting big are too high. If government is not an alternative, and government is not allowed to prevent big businesses from using their leverage like the government, then what is the alternative? Conservatives need to answer this question before a majority of new voters are going to accept their philosophy. Laissez-faire works for widgets, but not for high tech manufacturing, multinational distribution networks and biotechnology. The conservative ideology hasn't been updated to the reality on the ground today. The idea that bad businesses cannot be successful is false. There are plenty of poorly run businesses that can monopolize the market based on the shear cost and complexity of competitors entering the market (see the airline, auto, finance and energy industries for examples).

 

When the choice is between being abused by big oil's $4 gasoline or big government spending large sums of money on mass transit, big government wins. When the choice is between expensive inadequate health insurance from a private provider, and taking a chance that health insurance from the government may be less expensive and less inadequate, the government wins. When the choice is between investing your money with a high fee stock broker who gets million dollar bonuses and just lost half of it anyway, because he really wasn't doing a very good job, and investing in the US Government who offers a guaranteed "conservative" return, the government wins. How can you win on the platform that you can't trust government when you offer untrustworthy big businesses as the only alternative? When your idea of an alternative to big government running the power grid is Enron, you're not going to get much traction moving forward. Young voters have the internet, and they know how to use it!

The dying Republican coalition

Submitted by lgm on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 21:30.

The Reagan Republican coalition is dying.  That was the coalition between economic conservatives and cultural conservatives.  Together they put Reagan over the top but individuatlly they could not have.  The up and coming generation probably has ample economic conservatives, but not enough cultural conservatives.  Homophobia never again will put an airhead actor in the Whitehouse.

the Grand old Party

Submitted by sailordan on Sat, 04/18/2009 - 18:30.

Hi Kristen,

I enjoyed your blog very much. While I'm not of the younger generation, I do have some insight into the issues the GOP are facing. The young people of today have little time to referance to, where politics are concerned. All I seem to hear is the last 8 years, that's only a sliver of time in a problem that has taken many generations to come to this point  in our historty .Correction, several problems that reach back as far as the Bank of  the United States. Shortly after the signing of the Constatution; deserting the Gold standard;  fractional banking policies; and the uncontrolled power of the Federal Reserve. It was Thomas Pain who wrote "Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distincion between them; whereas they are not only different,  but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our voices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. the first is a patron, the last a punisher". Common Sense, 1775

Today Government 's, both state and Federal, have cnofused society with Government . they fail to see that while societys are ment to grow and prosper, Government , in the simplest terms is alyways best .

I fear that the founders made one mistake when framing our Constatution. They placed too much confidence in the people. They alowed the people to chose the length of time a senator or congressman can serve. They never expected that Americans would become so complacent as to allow represenitives to become so arrogant  as to egnore the will of the people . They should have written term limits for all public officeses .

I believe that if the Republican Party wants to regain the power they enjoyed during the Reagan years, then they need to start acting like the Republicans who founded this country . They need to stand for principals, not slogans. They need to defend the Constatution, that so many before them have fought to protect.

We the people must rebuild our party with new patriates who understand the history of our government . Only through the past can we see the mistakes of our forefathers.