mekka okereke :verified:
I'm going to keep sharing this info until it sinks in.
Young voters do not get significantly more or less politically activated. Voter suppression gets more or less effective. Ballot drop boxes and mail-in voting, prevents suppression.
People do not become more conservative as they get older. There is not an increasing difference between white GOP and Dem voters as they get older.
Black people don't live long, and many brown voters aren't born yet.
mekka okereke :verified:
If ~50% of white voters of all generations reliably vote for whoever is the most racist candidate on the ballot, but only ~10% of Black voters do...
Then how do you think Trump will do with young voters?
Why are Dems always talking about the "youth vote?"
Why does voter suppression (which is aimed at Black communities) tend to affect young voters more?
These questions aren't hard to answer.
mekka okereke :verified:
Reposting this as the old one's on my abandoned mastodon.cloud account, and I don't want people to go there.
And every time someone writes an article with some bad statistics pretending that either people get more conservative as they get older, or younger generations are "less conservative," I'm going to show this again.
Younger generations can get Blacker and browner.
Or we can reduce voter suppression.
Or let Black and brown people live longer.
mekka okereke :verified:
This is also why people have been saying since the '60s "Young people are less racist and more progressive! As the older generation passes on, things will get better!" A comforting idea.
But you can see from looking at the demographic graph, and seeing the way that White Americans of all ages vote, why this predicted "shift to enlightenment" didn't happen in the '70s, '80s, '90s, 2000s, 2010s, and it won't happen in the 2020s.
Unless we change it.
mekka okereke :verified:
This is why I, and so many other Black voters, are so often right about who is going to win a US election, and your favorite statistician, or election pundit, is so often wrong.
Your polls don't matter. Campaign promises don't matter. It's all about turnout. And turnout is all about voter suppression. And voter suppression is all about racism.
Without understanding US racism, your election predictions will always be woefully wrong.
mekka okereke :verified:
The most common age for a Black person in the United States is 27.
The most common age for a white person in the United States is 58.
Black folk vote ~90% Dem. White folk across all age cohorts, are closer to 50/50, with most GOP.
Think about this the next time someone says, "Older voters are more conservative."
Everyone that works in elections in the US knows this but pretends not to know it.
This is why GOP campaigns focus on voter suppression.
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