patrick.net

... Not everyone goes to college, of course. But as David Zweig said in our interview on his smart new book on the disaster of Covid school closures, “Childhood is achingly brief, and they stole time from these kids, and they stole experiences.”

They — the Donald Trump-hating Democratic blob that includes the public health establishment, teachers’ unions, academia, and the media — sure did.

And two new polls strongly suggest people who were under 25 in 2020 have not forgotten or forgiven. The first poll has gotten some attention. The second, which provides even more powerful evidence of the shift, has not. It should.

Last week, Yale released the results of a national survey that compares the views of about 2,000 people aged 18-29 with the same number of older adults. But the finding that received the most attention actually compared people within the younger group.

The Yale survey discovered that the youngest survey respondents - those 21 and under — were much more conservative than those just slightly older, aged 22-29. ...

In other words, 18 to 21-year-old voters leaned 18 percentage points to the right of those only slightly older. And for the first time in generations, the youngest voters said they favored Republicans overall — at least in this survey. ...

In other words, the Harvard poll confirms the Yale results. The historic Democratic edge among young voters is gone. ...

The stunning part is that in 2019, Harvard offered the same age breakdown. And back then, about twice as many 18 to 24-year-olds said they were Democrats as Republicans. 41 percent of respondents said they were Democrats, compared to 21 percent of Republicans. Democrats had a 20 percentage point lead among the young.

Flash forward six years, through Covid and lockdowns and insane mask and distancing rules at colleges that ruined both the 2020 and 2021 academic years at most schools. And mRNA vaccine mandates for college students — and for many young people who weren’t college students too.

Those 18-to-24 year olds are now 24-to-30. And they aren’t overwhelmingly Democratic anymore. They don’t even lean Democratic.

They have felt the well-meaning boot of the public health authoritarians on their necks and they are suspicious of government. (They don’t seem to care about climate change nearly as much as they once did, either.)

The kids can’t get those years back, but they can punish the Democratic blob that took them. And they are.