Via Yglesias, I find this fascinating post from OKCupid’s OKTrends largely about the relationship of political beliefs and age. If you run through the whole thing first, the following will make a lot more sense. Now, there’s a lot interesting stuff there, though do be careful not to confuse cohort effects with life-cycle effects (the author raises a flag, but it may not get enough emphasis). That is to say, older people’s politics look a lot different from younger people’s not so much because they are older, but because they are part of a different generational cohort. Different generations grew up under different economic and cultural conditions, and this affects their values throughout life. It’s exceedingly unlikely that today’s 20-somethings will ever be as socially conservative as today’s 60-somethings. There are life-cycle effects, but the age-related changes tend to tend to stay within the gravitational field of relatively stable points fixed in adolescence and young adulthood.
That said, let’s look at some of these charts. Be warned: I am not intimate with this data, and this is just me riffing based on my sense of it. I will not be surprised to discover I am making some silly mistake. But let us be bold.
The points are average location in a Nolan Chart-like two dimensional space for each age from 18-60. There are of course people of each age all over the map. (I’m a 37 year-old with political opinions that would land me close to the typical 18 year-old.) This is just showing you where you’re most likely to find a 20 year-old or a 50 year-old.
So how does this relate to party identification?
This is a simplification, since economic and social issues are not of equal importance to everyone at every age. So, if you pick an age, the relative weight people of that age put on social and economic issues will shift the party ID line. So here’s how the relative importance of economic and social issues for 28 year-olds divides the partisan space.
(You can move the line around by moving the slider on the OKCupid post; these are screen grabs. )
I’m especially interested in the upper left quadrant — the libertarian quadrant. If you’re a 28 year-old and in the libertarian space, you are more likely than not to lean Democrat. (More than half the area in the libertarian quadrant is on the “will tend Democrat” side of the line.)
In contrast:
51 year-olds in the libertarian space are much more likely to lean Republican. (Well more than half the libertarian quadrant is on the “will tend Republican side of the line.”)
Let’s look at the overlap of these two charts in the libertarian quadrant:
Let’s call the pink triangle the “libertarian contested zone.” If you’re a Baby Boomer or older with views in the contested zone, you probably lean Republican. If you’re Gen-X or younger and fall in the contested zone, you probably lean Democrat. 20 year-olds and 50 year-olds occupying the exact same point on the matrix may have relatively large differences in major party sympathies.
Because older libertarians in the contested zone lean Republican, they probably feel comfortable with elements of right-wing political culture that may have little or nothing to do with their opinions on issues which determined their place on the grid. They’ll be fairly patriotic, find Founder worship relatively unproblematic, feel a bit antagonized by “political correctness” and relatively untroubled by casual “commonsense” race and gender stereotypes, and will generally feel sympathetic to conservative assumptions about American identity. They’re a bit hawkish and worried about Islamism. They might make a show of enjoying guns, steaks, and cigars. They’re inclined to get a kick out of Glenn Beck. Or so I conjecture.
Because younger libertarians in the contested zone lean Democratic, they probably feel comfortable with elements of left-wing political culture that may have little or nothing to do with their opinions on issues which determined their place on the grid. They’ll probably be relatively cosmopolitan, inclined to celebrate diversity, and sensitive to ongoing discrimination against women, ethnic minorities, and gays. They’ll be relatively unimpressed with rhetorical appeals to the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and the virtues of really real American red-state American identity. They’re a bit dovish and worried about civil liberties under the Patriot Act. The might make a show of eating ethically, a penchant for indie rock, and a well-worn passport. They’re inclined to think Glenn Beck is a maudlin fool. So I say.
So what does all this suggest?
One thing it suggests that the neo-Fusionist elements of the Tea Party movement are attractive primarily to older people. And I suspect that the more strongly certain libertarian ideas and tendencies are associated with the cultural politics of Baby Boomer conservative Republicans, the more strongly young people with libertarian inclinations will tend to identify with the Democratic Party and take on cultural assumptions and characteristics common to liberals. Here’s my bottom line. Democratic-leaning libertarian young adults are the primary “liberaltarian” constituency. They are to my mind who liberaltarianism is intended for. Liberaltarianism or libertarian-liberal fusionism is not about some ridiculous practical political coalition between Larry Kudlow and Bill Galston. It is about building a coherent, appealing, practical ideological identity for all those libertarian-ish young folks who don’t want a damn thing to do with the party of old, angry religious white people.