2016 Political Insights

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying wrong remedies.

Quote attributed to: Groucho Marx

 

This month (October 2016) Xavier University asked a series of extra questions on the ADCI survey about the current political atmosphere. The extra questions covered political leaning, where respondents get their news and whether the right candidates were on the ballot.  I thought these questions were timely so I want to share the researcher’s conclusions with you.  To that end, here are the highlights from the data:

	Liberal	Moderate	Conservative
Millennial	35.46%	46.10%	18.44%
Gen X	29.20%	41.30%	29.50%
Boomer	23.16%	38.25%	38.60%
Greatest Generation	17.36%	37.85%	44.79%
Total Cohort	25.17%	40.17%	34.66%

1 Compared to previous months, there was a slight decline in the percent of people identifying as a conservative and a small increase in the percent of people identifying as a liberal.

2 Millennials represent the only generation with more than 25% of respondents to say they get most their political news from social media. Overall, most generations said TV was their number one source of political news.

3 Approximately half of people over 55 years old say the person they would like to vote for is not running in the current presidential election. Compare this to approximately 60% of those under 55 who say they would like to vote for someone not running in the presidential election. This sentiment is most shared by those reporting to be of conservative or moderate political identity. Only 40% of liberals say they would like to vote for someone not running in the current election.

Generation	Agree	Disagree
Millennial	60.28%	39.72%
Gen X	57.52%	42.48%
Boomer	49.82%	50.18%
Greatest	49.65%	50.35%
Total Cohort	53.66%	46.34%

4 In spite of so many people saying they are unsatisfied by the current presidential offerings, 75% of all respondents say this is the most important presidential election of their lifetime.