Young Americans don’t care much for political parties. According to the Pew Research Center, 48 percent of millennials (ages 18–33) identify as independents. That’s almost as many as identify as Democrats (28 percent) and Republicans (18 percent) put together.
Political scientists are often skeptical about the independent option in surveys. Most individuals who choose to call themselves “independents” still vote consistently with one party or the other. They are partisans except in name.
Even if that’s true, the lack of loyalty or concern for parties still has consequences. For instance, presidential primary campaigns were established to allow a party’s members to choose its candidate. But the research team at Tufts University’s Tisch College, where I study civic engagement, estimates that young Americans (18–30) have so far cast more votes for Senator Bernie Sanders than for Secretary Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined.
Sanders is a party outsider. He ran all his previous campaigns as a socialist, defeating Democrats on the way to statewide office. His career outside the Democratic Party doesn’t faze young Democratic primary voters—and I suspect it even increases his appeal with youth.
Does the fact that young people ignore or dislike parties tell us something about youth and their culture, or is this more about the parties and how they have changed?
Rejecting the Hierarchy
Today’s young voters have grown up in an age of social media. Millennials both expect and prefer loose networks that allow individuals to personalize their views and form and shift relationships freely. That’s bad news for political parties—hierarchical organizations with officers, rules, official platforms, and membership criteria.
Religion offers a parallel case. The pollster Anna Greenberg finds that young Americans are still spiritual—indeed, they continue to believe in many traditional tenets of religion—but they are not drawn to traditional religious institutions. She argues that young people expect to be able to choose exactly the religious content they prefer and to express their individual preferences in much the same way as they choose music and consumer goods.
