There were some good questions to the readings of Millennial Makeover, so I've recieved via email the responses from the authors in this post. Also, they will be on FireDogLake this Saturday for its book Salon, if you've any other questions.

Here are the previous entries on Millennial Makeover:  MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics

Part I: About Political Makeovers

Part II: Millennials and the 2008 Election

Part III: Millennials and Public Policy

On to the Q & A:

Question from Fuzzy Dunlop

     Q. What is a "realignment election?" What possible outcomes would qualify 2008 as a realigning election?

     A. Political scientists and historians generally agree that realignments have occurred regularly and predictably about every four decades throughout U.S. history. There have been five previous realignments--in 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932, and 1968--and we believe that one is about to occur in 2008. During the forty years between realignments one of the political parties dominates the political process by winning about three-quarters of all presidential elections. Each of the parties has a stable coalition of groups that almost invariably give it a majority of their votes. (Think of the almost unanimous support of African-Americans for the Democrats and white Evangelical Protestants for the GOP and the predictable "red state/blue state" pattern we've seen for the past several decades). Finally, during the years between realignments, public policy concerns and outputs remain stable. For example, during the current era, public policy has emphasized the relatively laissez faire economic policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations and a significant focus on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.

     A realigning election (or era) produces a major turnover in electoral results.  Normally, in a realignment the formerly dominant party loses that status and the formerly weaker party becomes electorally dominant. That happened in 1828, 1860, 1932, and 1968.  Realignments invariably produce major alterations in party voting coalitions. The late 1960s realignment saw the South shift from being solidly Democratic to solidly Republican and the Northeast and New England move away from the Republicans to the Democrats. In public policy, that realignment also produced, among other things, the end of strong New Deal era governmental economic interventionism and a slowing down of civil rights legislation and enforcement.

     In Millennial Makeover, we argue that two types of realignment--"idealist" and "civic"--have alternated throughout U.S. history. Each type has sharply different characteristics and results than the other. The 1968 realignment was an "idealist" realignment. Idealist realignments produce a greater number of independents and split-ticket voting, low voter turnout, negative attitudes toward the political system and institutions, a focus on divisive social issues, more exclusionary racial and ethnic concerns, gridlock, limited government, and greater economic inequality.

     The coming realignment will be a "civic" realignment. It will lead to a greater level of voter identification with the political parties and more straight-ticket voting, high voter turnout, more positive attitudes toward politics and political institutions, lesser focus on social issues and greater concern with basic economic and international matters, more inclusive racial and ethnic concerns, revitalization and reliance of governmental institutions, and greater economic equality.

     For reasons we pointed out in previous postings, the Democrats (especially Obama, because of his strong appeal to the emerging Millennial Generation, but also Clinton) are best positioned to lead the coming civic realignment. But, in John McCain the Republicans will nominate a candidate with the greatest potential among all of the GOP contenders to produce a civic realignment. In the end, however, it won't simply be which party wins the election that will determine whether a realignment has or will occur. Party change is only one of several possible indicators. In addition, look for major changes in voting patterns, attitudes toward the political process, and public policy regardless of which party wins the presidency in November.

Questions from M. Boehm

      1) Historically, do voters tend to vote in large percentages for candidates of their own generation?  I've seen conflicting information about this.  

     2) In the next 20 years, will aging boomers offset the impact of the Millennials?  In other words, won't the voting age distribution chart look like Marilyn Monroe- heavy on the top (older) and bottom (younger).  Strauss/Howe place the start of the boomers at 1943 (if I remember correctly), meaning that the oldest boomers are turning 65 this year.

     3) Is there a good source of historical age cohort voting in Presidential elections?  I'm having some trouble finding this information before the 1990's and the widespread availability of exit polling data (which began during the 1960's?).      

     A. (Q. 1). Because an emerging generation that produces a realignment through its votes when it is very young, it must vote for candidates of an older generation. For example, the GI Generation that produced the "civic" New Deal realignment did so by electing Franklin Roosevelt, a member of the Missionary Generation. The Millennials who produce the next "civic" realignment will do that by electing older members of the either the Baby Boomer Generation (Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton) or Silent Generation (John McCain). Eventually, as members of the realigning generation themselves age and older generations inevitably pass from the scene, those in the realigning generation will vote for the own peers. Finally, as the realigning generation becomes elderly, it will, in turn, vote for members of younger generations.

     (Q. 2) Statistically, it is possible that Millennials could be outvoted by older generations in this election. However, the Millennial Generation is far more unified in its political attitudes and identifications than older generations. Its members identify as Democrats by about a 2:1 margin and it is probably the first generation since the GI Generation in which a greater number call themselves liberals rather than conservatives. It is also strongly united in its attitudes on a range of economic, international, and social issues. Finally, the gender and ethnic differences that separate the members of older generations from one another are very limited or even non-existent among Millennials. This unity in attitudes and behavior leads us to believe that, even though the Millennials will only comprise a  minority of the electorate in 2008, it will provide the crucial balance between the more divided older generations.

     However, the chances that Millennials will be outvoted by older generations will steadily diminish with time. For one thing, Millennials are a very large generation, the largest in U.S. history. The nearly 100 million Millennials now comprise about a third of the American population. By 2020, when all Millennials are eligible to vote and many Baby Boomers have died, the Millennial Generation will comprise a majority of the U.S. population and electorate and it will be impossible for an older generation to outvote them. This will especially be the case if, as we expect, Millennials remain politically unified and Boomers continue to be as divided as they have been for the past four decades.

     (Q. 3) There are two issues that impact the availability of age cohort data. First, scientific polling or sample survey research only began with the Gallup polls of the mid-1930s. Apart from anecdotal evidence, reliable information about generational voting patterns is unavailable before that time. In addition, survey data obtained since then, especially by academic or non-profit institutions, such as the University of Michigan Survey Research Center or the Pew Center for Survey Research, is archived and may be obtained by those with academic or non-commercial credentials. We were fortunate to have access to and the assistance of Pew in obtaining important data that we utilized in writing Millennial Makeover. Beyond that, we utilized analyses of voting behavior written by political scientists and other contemporary observers to obtain information about voting patterns and political attitudes within various age groups in previous historical eras. Finally, it may be possible to obtain archived information of this type from commercial research firms such as Gallup and Harris, although those organizations are often hesitant to do so.

Questions from mikeplugh

I'm involved in the Media Ecology field and wonder why there's no mention of Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Neil Postman or any of the people rooted in the tradition of medium theory cited in your work. It's a very good read and a very interesting piece of research, but it's missing the perspective on how Millennials are cognitively different beings than their Gen X and Baby Boomer predecessors.

They've been socialized less as literates and more as a kind of post-literate class of electronic learners. Baby boomers were still primarily a literate orientation, while Gen Xers shifted to an image-based cognition thanks to television as a primary communication environment. The Millennials are socialized in a digital/web-based environment on an increasing basis and cognitively resemble a tribal version of their literate American ancestors.

     Q. Curious about what consideration you gave to ideas like this in putting your book together...

     A. In our book we talk about the impact that Information Technology architectures--such as mainframe, client/server or web/social networks--have on organizational governance and culture. We draw upon the experience of the media industry, particularly the music sector, to suggest what happens when peer- to-peer architectures disrupt existing power structures and use those as analogies to political campaigns and their governing structures and cultural attributes.  We wrote all that early in 2007, before the Obama vs. Clinton Democratic primary campaign made these comparisons obvious to everyone. However, we did not delve into the works of those who have established medium theory and postulated that the medium impacts our cognitive development. The omission was simply a matter of us not feeling we had any particular expertise in this area that would allow us to provide any new insights on the question. That said, we don't have any quarrels with your insightful comments.

Questions from astrodem

     1) One of the dangers Strauss and Howe refer to in their work The Fourth Turning is the tendency late in an Unraveling for the older generations to cling to institutional and political power for too long...to the point where it can disrupt the transition into the subsequent turning (Crisis). Due to the peculiarities of our electoral college system, swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania, and Arizona--which have significant senior-aged populations--are likely to play a pivotal role in the 2008 election. Do you see any potential for swing states with large Silent-aged populations to delay the coming realignment? What specific dangers do you associate with such a scenario?

     2) Although the historic immigration rallies in the spring of 2005 involved participants of all ages and generations, it is my understanding that these rallies were largely organized by young Millennial-aged Latinos via their online social networks, email, texting, and by word-of-mouth. Latino Millennials then recruited their siblings, parents, grandparents, and extended families to join the cause. Do you see this as an early example of Millennial organizing abilities?

     3) Related to question #2, is it possible that we could see similar mass organizing by the Millennial generation in defense of their preferred presidential candidate during the Democratic Convention in Denver this summer? It seems highly unlikely that Millennials would be content to sit back and do nothing if Hillary Clinton were to use underhanded tactics to try to steal the nomination from Barack Obama. Are we looking at a replay of the 1968 convention, but on an even bigger scale?

     4) Tensions between the generations often erupt during realignments. During the late 60's and early 70's, those tensions became very personal. Boomer teenagers and twenty-something's rebelled quite openly against their own GI parents. The dinner table became a place of heated political confrontation, often to the point of mutual distrust and in some cases disrespect. Yet we don't see that kind of highly personalized intergenerational hostility AT ALL as the realignment of this decade approaches. Millennials get along famously with their Boomer parents, seeing their parents as inalienable friends and vital to their support system, even when they and their parents are supporting different candidates. In this realignment, we can see the generational tensions in our politics, but not so much in our personal lives. How do you explain this difference?

     5) One of the big changes that I have noticed in late Xers and Millennials is they are far more attracted to urban living than their parents, who prefer big houses on big plots in big suburbs. Today's youth, influenced by shows like The Real World, Sex and the City, Will and Grace, and Seinfeld seem far more attracted to urban lofts, condos, and high rises. They have also been influenced by a pop culture that demonizes and/or ridicules suburbia: American Beauty, Desperate Housewives, the Stepford Wives, Disturbia, etc. With the collapse of the housing market, many are forecasting the end of suburbia as we know it, predicting that suburbs are going to become the ethnic and working class slums of the 21st Century. Even if these predictions are overstating the case, this still strikes me as a major shift in our culture and demography. Does this kind of shift have any precedent in previous realignments or turnings? What, if any, are the political implications?

     A. (Q. 1). Our primary motivation for writing the book was to explain the Millennial Generation to older generations so America would not mismanage this particular generational transition. While we think the Millennial Generation is too large and too unified for its  impact to be thwarted by smaller and more divided older generations, your point about the  older electorates in certain states conflicting with younger voters, is a good example of what could go wrong. Arizona, and to a lesser degree, Florida, won't matter much since they are likely McCain states anyway. But Pennsylvania will remain a real test of the Democratic party's ability to heal its generational divisions right on through the general election. If it turns out to be the state that allows a Silent generation candidate to take office in staunch opposition to a Millennial-oriented Congress, Millennials might raise the intensity of their demand for change in ways that could be very disruptive to our political process. But the social rules Millennials have embraced make it unlikely that we would see open rebellion as opposed to increased political participation from this young generation that will eventually overwhelm older voters in most states, if not in 2008, than very shortly afterwards.

     (Q. 2) Yes we do. In Los Angeles the Millennial Latino organizers first asked their parents for permission to leave school to organize the demonstrations. When they got to City Hall they respectfully met with the political power structure to be sure they were sympathetic to their cause. While their leaders met with the Mayor the rest of them sat down on the steps of City Hall since some of them had read that "sit ins" were part of the student protests in the sixties. When the march was done, the Millennials picked up their trash so as not to disturb the urban environment and went  quietly back on their school buses and returned to school. The contrast in style and tone with the political protests of their idealist Boomer parents couldn't have been more dramatic.  

     (Q. 3) While it is quite possible that Millennials will organize to make sure the Democratic convention nominates their favorite candidate, it would be highly unlikely that the protests would be in the streets or resemble the events of the 1968 convention in any other way. Millennials will insist the older adults in the arena "play by the rules" and find "win-win solutions" that work for the entire group.  The idea of forcing confrontation and creating winners and losers is just not in this generation's consciousness. Instead you are likely to see electronic petitions, lots of YouTube videos, and a constant stream of chatter on social networks and cell phones designed to persuade the delegates to `do the right thing." The implied threat will be not violent physical disruption, but a willingness to desert the Democratic Party in November 2008 and very likely for the coming four decades.

     (Q. 4) Millennials are not Boomers. They belong to an entirely different generational archetype. They are members of a "civic" generation, Boomer are members of an "idealist" generation. While Millennials are as young now as their parents were in the sixties, that doesn't necessarily mean that the two generations will act the same way politically or in other respects.  The behavior of Millennials, in fact, resembles that of the earlier civic generation, the GI Generation, which took on the problems of the Depression and World War II that were  left to it  by older generations and used the political process to find solutions to those problems.  The members of the GI Generation  didn't complain. They didn't riot in the streets. They just went about the business of remaking America in fundamental ways. The political campaigns of the 1930s  were just as intense as those we are experiencing today,  but even in the midst of the worst economic crisis the country has ever faced violent social protest was at a minimum. Even the Socialist party that offered a very populist, radical economic solution to the Great Depression was unable to secure the support of more than 3 % of the voters at the depth of the Depression in the 1932 presidential election.  As with the GI Generation, rules  matter to Millennials, unlike their anti-establishment Boomer and Gen-Xer  parents.

     (Q. 5) There is no evidence of the demographic shifts you describe. Families and jobs continue to migrate to America's suburbs despite talk of "cool cities" or the attractiveness of urban culture. Lots of young Millennials live in cities, of course--or on college campuses. But more than a quarter of those older than eighteen still live with their parents, presumably in suburban settings. And once they become "settled" by  getting married and having families they show no sign of reversing the continuing suburbanization of America that has been characteristic of the United States  for the last fifty years. The pop culture examples you cite are not indicative  of Millennial culture. Think instead of High School Musical and Hanna Montana.  Those represent Millennial ideals and values much more than what the Boomer producers and Gen X writers in Hollywood think of as fare for the youth market.

Questions from TinaH1963

     Q) We already have a national service program--it's called Americorps.  We also already have programs that reward people with money for college if they use their postgraduate education to serve in underserved communities.  Still, I like the idea of requiring service, because I think we should all give back.

     A) We have certainly not meant to omit or denigrate the existence or value of the existing national service programs--Americorps-- as well as the Peace Corps and the U.S. Military. Nor are we necessarily predicting the creation of new national service organizations, although it would not surprise us if those were created during the next several decades.

Rather we are simply pointing to the extraordinary willingness of the members of the Millennial Generation to serve their country and their communities in a variety of ways. In 2004, 80% of high school students, all of whom were Millennials, participated in a community service program. This compares with only 27% of high school students, all of whom were Gen-Xers, who did so in 1984. Similarly, in 2006 more than a quarter (26%) of national service volunteers were 16-24 years old.  Again all of them were members of the Millennial Generation. This is twice the percentage contributed by members of Generation X of that age in 1989 (13%).  

More anecdotally, Jon Schnuur, the CEO of New Leaders for New Schools, said in a recent event at which we spoke that more than 10 percent of the last graduating classes of both Princeton University and Spelman College had applied for the national Teacher Corps, too many for that organization to enroll. In addition, perhaps Barack Obama's biggest applause line when he speaks on college campuses is his proposal to provide two years of college expenses in exchange for one form or another of public service. While, in part, this positive reaction likely stems from the self-interest of a generation beleaguered by college loan debt, it also reflects the orientation toward service of this generation of Americans.  Finally, regardless of one's personal opinion of the Iraq war or the way in which the Bush Administration in managing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, all of us must recognize that many, if not most, of the front line troops in those conflicts are members of the Millennial Generation who have volunteered to serve and who are doing so with dedication, competence, and courage.

At this point, we cannot predict with certainty whether the increased opportunities for public service will become mandatory or remain voluntary. On the one hand, the already existing proclivity of Millennials to volunteer for public service, as well as proposals such as Senator Obama's to compensate such service, may make more coercive measures unnecessary. On the other, given the positive attitudes toward and the value placed on public service by this generation, we would not expect Millennials to resist mandatory public service to nearly the extent that those in older generations, in particular Baby Boomers, once did.