Why Young People Don’t Vote Republican
There has been no shortage of Republican post-mortems on the 2012 presidential election and no shortage of apologists who claimed the party need only change its rhetoric (and stop nominating members of the legitimate-rape caucus) to attract women, minorities and young people.
The latest of these analyses, focused on voters aged 18-29, sometimes falls into the apologist/rebranding trap. It suggests, for example, that abortion is a problematic topic for the G.O.P. because young people conflate abortion with Planned Parenthood, contraception and womens health care in general as though Republican officeholders and candidates across the country hadnt done their best to draw that connection.
But the report is far more candid than other post-mortems. It could also be far more helpful if it pushes the G.O.P. to examine the actual policies, rather than the slogans, that turn off young voters.
The report points out that a better Facebook page is not going to help much if voters dont like your ideas. It says younger voters arent particularly wary of big government, for example, which has been a central Republican bogeyman for decades.
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/why-young-people-dont-vote-republican/?hp