Does the Republican Base Skew Old?

by Patrick Ruffini :: May 22nd, 2007 4:01 pm

The lively conversation about the GOP online continues. This time, Eric Frenchman, John McCain’s Internet advertising guru, weighs in.

Eric’s argument basically boils down to: the Republican base skews older, hence they’re less likely to be online. It’s a compelling argument, and one I’ve heard before, but one I’ve got to swat down.

The last two elections in particular have seen a pronounced young voter skew towards the Democrats. Here are the exit polls from 2006 and 2004, Democrats first:

2006
18-29: 60% - 38% Dem (D + 22)
30-44: 53% - 45% Dem (D + 8 )
45-59: 53% - 46% Dem (D + 7)
60+: 50% - 48% Dem (D + 2)

2004
18-29: 54% - 45% Kerry (Kerry + 9)
30-44: 53% - 46% Bush (Bush + 7)
45-59: 51% - 48% Bush (Bush + 3)
60+: 54% - 46% Bush (Bush + 8 )

In these elections, young voters were very much the outliers, supporting Democrats by far more than any other group. And older voters, relatively speaking, did realign with Republicans. In 2000, Bush and Gore were even stevens in every age bracket.

But that assumes that the Internet as a political medium is still dominated by 18-29 year olds — the only age bracket where you could justify a huge Democratic edge based on body count alone. Which runs against every shred of evidence I’ve seen about the online world. I’m 28, and it seems like just about everyone in the blogosphere is older than I am. Quantitatively, the numbers hold up. According to last year’s Blogads survey, the average age of a conservative blog reader worked out to about 47. For liberals, it was 43. Not exactly a huge age gap.

(This hypothesis might validate when you’re talking about MySpace/Facebook, which are composed almost exclusively of 18-29 year-olds. But is anyone willing to argue that these sites now occupy prime position when it comes to online politics? That they’re more important than YouTube or blogs?)

Then there’s this:

The Demographic snapshot of DailyKos.com readers reveals that while all adult age groups are represented, there is a very large skew toward adults 65 and older. In fact, this age group is nearly four times as likely as the norm to visit the site.

And here’s the full breakdown of DailyKos readers from comScore:

	% Composition of Unique Visitors	Composition Index
Persons - Age
Persons: 18-34	20.7	79
Persons: 35-44	17.5	95
Persons: 45-54	27.7	137
Persons: 55-64	12.2	104
Persons: 65+	21.9	375

The age differentials between the parties are nothing compared to the age skew of primary voters and non-voters within the parties. I’ve done voter file analysis before and the median age of a primary voter can range upwards of 55 — in both parties. So, Eric is right to caution a balanced approach online and off — but that advice probably applies about equally to Democrats.

In the Blogads survey, there’s support for another theory often advanced to explain the difference between the online right and left. That Republicans have kids. Here’s a breakdown of household size; over 100% indicates a greater liberal propensity in that group.

1	143.4%
2	109.5%
3	102.2%
4	82.6%
5	49.7%
6	33.1%
7	28.4%
8+	34.6%

These are fairly staggering numbers. Liberals are fully 40% more likely to live by themselves. Conservatives are twice as likely to have 3 kids, and 3 times as likely to have 4 kids or more.

Intuitively, I think that has a lot more to do with levels of activism than age. After all, retired people should have a lot of time on their hands and are outsized participants in other aspects of the political process. But someone with kids (and presumably a steady job to support those kids) is a lot less likely to have time to refresh Daily Kos. My household size recently exploded from 2 to 4, and I can safely say that my blogging output has gone down. Paging Henry: I want the next Blogads survey (probably in 2008) to break down how much time conservatives and liberals spend online in a week. And I want a breakdown of activism levels by household size (doable this year).

Ultimately, I not only believe the age analysis is inaccurate. I think it’s poisonous. To claim that the Internet is primarily a venue for young people cheapens it. The Internet is more mainstream than that. Yes, teen texting fiends are the most voracious users, but by and large, they’re not interested in politics yet. There’s another audience of people who do go online and do vote and that’s who you should be focused on. Remember, that when we’re talking about online politicos, 35 is still young. The average online citizen is 45. It’s in that late 30’s, early 40’s age range that online news consumption hits its sweet spot. And that demographic was the second most Republican group in the last Presidential election.

Tagged: demographics online politics

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