Millenials: The Independent Divide

The world is changing. The Millennial Generation is rising, which The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies defines as anyone born between the years 1985-2004. This is the future generation of political, education, business and religious leaders.

With the 2016 presidential race right around the corner, it leaves questions about the voting patterns of Millennials. “Millennials demonstrate a lot of the same attributes those prior generations exhibited when they were the same age. Historically the youngest generation has always been the least engaged and participatory in every election. Millennials are no different from their previous cohorts in that regard,” said Jay Desart, a political science professor at UVU.

The social critic and standup comedian George Carlin asked, “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

Carlin points out one aspect of being human, which is personal bias. We all have them, stemming from a variety reasons like previous experience, personality type, and other favors. They range on a spectrum of taste in music and fashion trends to political, religious or secular ideology.

In 1828 the Democratic Party was established, and in 1854, 57 years after George Washington’s second presidential term ended, the Republican Party was founded.

Since then, these two parties have dominated American politics, and have been the foundation for millions of personal biases and bipartisan policies.

Compromise is the premise behind bipartisanship, which is used as a solution to satisfy the personal biases of two people or groups. It led to the Missouri Compromise fostered by Henry Clay, which prohibited the practice of slavery north of the parallel line 36 30.

“Millennials are slightly more likely to identify themselves as Independent than recent previous generational cohorts did when they were the same age. In 2012, 35 percent of Millennials identified themselves as Independent. By comparison, in 1988, the first election in which the previous gene

rational cohort—Generation X—could vote, 26 percent of them identified themselves as Independent. Among those

who do profess identification toward a party, Millennials in 2012 were more likely to identify themselves as Democrat than Republican, 38 percent to 26 percent,” said Desart, citing data from the American National Election Study surveys.

Perhaps the slight increase in Millennials identifying as Independents is due to more Millennials attending colleges and universities. Procon.org, a nonprofit research organization, reported 19.9 million students were enrolled in colleges and universities in 2013, compared to 13.5 million in 1990, 7.9 million in 1970, and 2.7 million in 1949.

The Washington Post and ABC conducted a randomized political poll in July. Donald Trump led the Republican candidates, however 32 percent of his supporters were non-college graduates. Whereas, 23 percent of Bernie Sanders, the independent governor of Vermont, were college graduates. Sanders’ policy focuses on renewable energy, raising the minimum wage and decreasing income inequality. Trump’s policy is ambiguous, and his candidacy is filled with racist remarks and nonsensical adjectives.

Fareed Zakaria is an economist for CNN, who wrote an book titled The Post-American World. The premise of this book focuses on education, which Zakaria claims is The United States of America’s greatest economic export.

Critical thinking is not a cliché. Millennials along with following generations should educate themselves. This gives the populous more power, and enables our society to critically think and not be swayed by discriminatory personal biases.

Bipartisanship is an outdated system, like burning fossil fuels, maybe the Millennial Generation will be an era where actual policy will be more important than pep rallies, smear campaigns and the financing of corrupt Super-Pac organizations with unlimited money.