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- Sen. Bernie Sanders is drawing strong support among young voters, particularly those aged 18 to 29, as a result of his pledges to enact universal healthcare and wipe out student debt.
- But older voters are mostly absent from the Sanders coalition, and many hold unfavorable views of socialism.
- One economist said older Americans have benefited from “boomer socialism.”
- It’s led younger adults to seek a greater share of the economic pie and call for the federal government to widen the social safety net for them.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders is solidifying his standing as the frontrunner of the Democratic primary after a victory in the New Hampshire primary and a strong finish in the Iowa caucus. The self-proclaimed democratic socialist seeks to enact universal healthcare in the US, wipe out student debt, and fight against climate change.
Combined with promises to take on the political and financial elite, the ambitious proposals are helping generate a wave of enthusiasm among younger voters that’s propelling his unabashedly progressive campaign, similar to 2016.
Business Insider recently reviewed exit polls from the New Hampshire primary on February 11 and found Sanders drew nearly half of voters aged 18-29, more than the other four major Democrats on the ballot combined.
But conspicuously missing from his nascent coalition of voters: older Americans, long a force at the voting booth. Exit polls from New Hampshire showed Sanders drew only 15% of voters over age 65.
Put simply, older voters aren’t flocking to back Sanders in similar numbers. A CNN poll last month found the Vermont senator drew 30% more support among Americans under the age of 45 compared to those over 65.
Part of the reason is the unpopularity of socialism, particularly among voters born before 1975, according to Gallup. The same poll indicated that favorable views of socialism among young adults is still relatively high while those for capitalism steadily dropped over the past decade — 49% and 51%, respectively.
The rising price tags of healthcare, education, and homeownership have left many young people feeling marginalized from the economy, leading to calls for drastic reform that levels the playing field for them and curbs widening inequality. Sanders has pledged to deliver transformational change that deals with their deepening anxieties.
“Unless we turn this around, young people are going to be on a lower standard of living than their parents. That means they are leaving school deeply in debt,” the Vermont senator told the New York Times editorial board.
He went on: “The jobs they’re getting may not necessarily in real dollars be equivalent to what their parents had. They can’t afford housing. This is a generation that is struggling, and we have to address that.”
Tuition and fees at colleges and universities has doubled twice as fast compared to wage growth, leaving one in three adults in their 20s to pay off student debt. Healthcare costs are swelling and the millennial homeownership rate is 8% less compared to their parents at the same age.
Sanders has vowed to remake the economy and redistribute its riches through higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for an array of expansive plans. They add up to over $50 trillion in federal spending, and would usher in a profound expansion of the welfare state benefiting millions of people.
But Sanders has long struggled with older voters who tend to link socialism with Soviet communism and distrust his platform. Economist Ed Glaeser, though, argued that older Americans already benefit from a group of policies he’s called “boomer socialism.”
“In many cases, there seems to be a sense in which insiders have managed to stack the deck against outsiders,” Glaeser told The Wall Street Journal.
Glaeser pointed out that groups of people — like retirees and homeowners — have locked in benefits for themselves and made it more difficult for newcomers, whether young people or immigrants, to obtain similar chances of prosperity.
Here are three federal programs that mostly benefit older Americans, per the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson:
- Medicare represents a form of single-payer healthcare for people aged 65 and over, insuring almost 60 million Americans, or one in five people in the US.
- Social Security is a program that operates similarly to universal basic income, guaranteeing monthly payments to elderly and disabled Americans.
- The mortgage-interest deduction cuts a person’s tax bill by the amount of interest paid on a home loan. In other words, it’s a tax break for homeowners whose average age is 54 and critical gateway into the middle class.
Young adults are pressing to widen the reach of government benefits to include them as well. And they’re no longer satisfied with a system that keeps those advantages sequestered for adults in previous generations.
A key reason is that the traditional stepping stones toward a life of prosperity are no longer easy to secure. Higher education, affordable housing, and quality healthcare is out of reach for many.
As Thompson put it, Sanders seeks to expand the “existing social contract” that older people already enjoy to include a new generation of Americans.
Still, the Vermont senator’s call for a progressive revolution appears to have its limits.
In New Hampshire, the share of Democratic voters ages 18 to 29 dropped from 2016, the Washington Post reported. Turnout was also lower in the disastrous Iowa caucus.
Whether that trend continues as the primaries head south and west will be decisive for Sanders, who has pinned his presidential ambitions on turning out young adults in record numbers.
