rlg94086:
Of course. However, I would guess that more than 50% of kids eventually lean in the direction of their parents, especially in large conservative Catholic or Mormon families. I have a hard time believing it is dramatically lower than 50%, so for arguments sake, let’s say it is exactly 50%. Since there are more births in the conservative families there would still be a higher number of future conservatives.
I don’t have numbers to back up my guess, but I have just as much anecdotal evidence as someone who wants to argue the contrary view.
Robert
Actually, statistically, people in politics will tell you that the factor with the greatest predictive correlation to children’s political views as early adults is that of the parents. Dems raise Dems, Reps raise Reps, and Inds raise Inds. I think the correlation is over 80%. However, after the age of 40, realignment occurs over adulthood developed factors of values and economics. For instance, there is more likely there to be liberal young Republicans vs. older liberal Republicans and conservative young Democrats vs. older conservative Democrats. I’ve also been told by a politically active friend that cross-over voters are usually motivated by values while people who re-register are more likely to be motivated by economics.
On a side note, Catholics were at one time predominatly Democrats. This alignment was caused by two factors: In the post Civil War period to late 1800’s when the predominance of immigrants from Catholic countries came to America, (1) Social reformers in the late 1800’s were primarily Democrats (the social reforms advanced by Teddy Roosevelt Republicans were motivated by an effort to attract Catholic Democrats that were rising in power in the the Northeast to the detriment of the establishment powers in these states) and (2) the areas Catholics settled were controlled by Republican WASP’s so they identified with the Democrats.
Today, the registration of Catholics are about evenly divided. However, of Catholics who do not attend Mass regularly and identify themselves as culturally Catholic, 80% are Democrat.
Of Catholics who attend Mass regularly and identify themselves as spiritually Catholic, 80% are Republican. (It is my supposition of the 20% of Catholic Republicans who aren’t spiritual and the 20% of Democrats who are spiritual that they are registered primarily over social justice/economic issues and not over values (confirmed by the cross-over voter vs. re-registered voter discussion above). I also think they are motivated to change their parties from within on the values questions rather than leaving).
And of these younger Catholics (under the age of 35) who are Republican, many of them registered Republican before their parents registered Republican. This fact appears to be contrary to the political rule of thumb I mentioned at the beginning of this post about children following their parents in politics in their early years. However, it isn’t contrary if you drill down as all that happened is that these young people recognized that the GOP better reflects the families political views before their parents did.*
- the source of this analysis is something I read about Catholic voters written I believe by Michael Novak.
Shhhh don’t tell them it is another “evil genius” plot against them…shhhhhh
rotfl
