There was a related article in the paper today (here's the link, thanks to John K.) so I thought I'd post these pictures again:
See here for my thoughts at the time.
Thinking more statistically . . .
This is a paradigmatic age/time/cohort problem. We'd like to look at a bunch of these survey results over time, maybe also something longitudinal if it's available, then set up a model to estimate the age, time, and cohort patterns (recognizing, as always, that it's impossible to estimate all of these at once without some assumptions).
Amazing. Under "Activities in past 2 months" there was no category for "blogging" or similar - and this in a survey that purported to include "DotNets".
Even though the NYT article attempts to show the correlation between a voter's opinion and the governing party in the period of coming of age, there is something else that strikes me - the 30 year cycle, which is also the parent-child gap.
In all, this brings back the old question of heritability of political opinion: family is an environment where opinions do get transferred, and there is quite a bit of data on this (NES) - the question is how much. I also presume that this has been studied in the past.
A commenter on another blog pointed out that this doesn't take into account of the 'Solid South' changing parties (which would have spanned the Goldwater-Reagan time fram).
Hi All,
For a nice look at longitudinal data on the life-course (age), period, and cohort effects on partisanship see:
Laura Stoker and M. Kent Jennings, "Aging, Generations, and the Development of Partisan Polarization in the United States" (January 17, 2006). Institute of Governmental Studies. Paper WP2006-1.