Americans are more politically unified by generation than race or gender. But why?

Over the summer, CNN included an unusual question in a national poll of Americans: How politically connected did they feel to others of the same gender, race or generation?

Most Americans replied that neither race nor gender were particularly relevant to their politics. Generation, though? Six in 10 said that they had a lot in common with others in the same age group — about the same percentages that said gender and race weren’t relevant to their politics.

There’s an interesting pattern here. Men are among those most likely to say that gender isn’t relevant to their politics. And White people are among those most likely to say that race isn’t relevant to their politics.

On seeing this, my first thought was a quote from sociologist Robert Terry that I’ve had stuck in my head for years (and that makes numerous appearances in my book): “To be white in America is not to have to think about it.” Men and White people hold disproportionate power in the U.S. and often (though certainly not always) reject the idea that gender and race play a role in their doing so. Their rejection of shared politics with peers might reflect a rejection of the idea that such commonality offers political utility.

How, then, do we explain the results by generation? Older people also hold disproportionate power in the U.S., in part thanks to the growing size of the over-65 population. (I guess I’ll once again point to my book on this subject.)

Well, something interesting happens if you break out the generational splits by party. Democrats (and Democrat-leaning independents) are more likely to reject generational commonality as they get older. Older Republicans (and leaners) are more likely to endorse commonality.

This undercuts my original thesis about the response being downstream from power. After all, an obvious explanation for the inverted trends by party is that young people are more heavily Democratic and old people more heavily Republican, meaning that young Democrats do have more in common with people of their generation than do older Democrats. The same holds for older Republicans, relative to younger ones. Older Republicans, meanwhile, are certainly not lacking for political power.

Maybe, then, what’s being tracked is perceived power. Maybe groups that feel less powerful (regardless of how accurate that is) perhaps see common political concerns with their peers.

If we look at gender and race by party, the picture doesn’t get much clearer.

Democratic (+leaning) men are more likely to say gender isn’t relevant to politics than Republican men and White Democrats are more likely to say that race isn’t relevant than White Republicans. If you squint, you can see how that comports with the revised thesis — the GOP is, at the moment, heavily focused on the false idea that White men have been targets of systematic repression — but it’s not terribly clear.

Which is probably the best place to leave it: Sometimes one set of numbers doesn’t answer all of the questions we might have.

Thanks to Ariel Edwards-Levy for sharing more-detailed breakdowns of the data.

Image: From my 2023 book, a map of where baby boomers lived in 1990 (dashed-line circles) and in 2020 (solid lines).