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Gee, what might've happened to all the young voters?
Gee, what might've happened to all the young voters?
In this article from Opinion Journal, the blame is shared by Nixon, Roe v Wade, and abortion:
Gee, what might've happened to all the young voters? Well, consider this: You're not allowed to vote unless you've passed your 18th birthday. In order to have any birthdays at all, you have to have been born. And over the past 30 years or so, many Americans have ended up not being born.
About.com lists the number of abortions in the U.S. each year starting in 1973, "based on assumptions by the Alan Guttmacher Institute." If we add up the numbers from 1975-86, we come up with approximately 17.5 million missing eligible voters between 18 and 29 years old. Exit polls found that voters this age who were born went for Kerry over Bush, 54% to 45%, while Bush had a majority in all other age groups. If it's true that women who have abortions tend to be more liberal than those who don't, then the unborn 18- to 29-year-olds likely would have favored the Democrat even more heavily.
Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision mandating legal abortion nationwide, was written by Justice Harry Blackmun, a Nixon appointee. Perhaps somewhere old Tricky Dick is smiling at how his judicial legacy helped the Republicans.
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