As college students prepare to enter a threadbare workforce, some are learning what outsiders have long suspected: Their professors were wrong. “The college vote is up for grabs this year — to an extent that would have seemed unlikely two years ago, when a generation of young people seemed to swoon over Barack Obama [1],” Kirk Johnson [2] reports in The New York Times. “Though many students are liberals on social issues, the economic reality of a weak job market has taken a toll on their loyalties: far fewer 18- to 29-year-olds now [3] identify themselves as Democrats compared with 2008.”
“Is the recession [4], which is hitting young people very hard, doing lasting or permanent damage to what looked like a good Democratic advantage with this age group?” Scott Keeter, of the Pew Research Center [5] told Johnson. “The jury is still out.”
I dunno. “Juries” recently delivered pretty clear-cut verdicts in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia.
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia [6].
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org [7].