The Next American Voter: The Political Demography of American Partisanship
Year: 2009
Type: preprint
Abstract: The recent rise and stability in macropartisanship has focused interest upon the long-term dynamics of party bases. Commentators cite immigration and youth as forces which will produce a natural Democratic advantage in the future while conservative writers highlight the importance of high Republican fertility in securing Republican growth. These concerns foreground the neglect of demography within political science. This paper seeks to address this omission by conducting the first ever cohort component projection of American partisan populations to 2043 based largely on GSS data. A number of scenarios are modeled, but, on current trends, we predict that American partisanship will shift much less than the nation’s ethnic composition because the parties’ age structures are similar. Still, our projections find that the Democrats gain two to three percentage points from the Republicans by 2043, mainly through immigration, though Republican fertility may redress the balance in the very long term
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Authors: Eric Kaufmann, Vegard Skirbekk
Institutions: University of London, Birkbeck, University of London
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1577992694