Wednesday, November 20, 1996
TRENDS:
1996 election results reveal rise of cross-partisan votingBy Amy
Finley
In the immediate aftermath of the Nov. 5 presidential election,
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich
were both quick to point out that President Clinton’s 49 percent of
the popular vote could not be construed as any sort of "democratic
mandate" on the grounds that he had won the election by "stealing"
Republican issues. They argued that his re-election, coupled with
continued Republican control of the House and Senate, actually
proved that the American public endorsed "Republican issues" which
Clinton had merely co-opted. Indeed, even members of the "liberal
media" came out to chastise Clinton upon his re-election for
abandoning the liberal values of the Democratic Party, and for
acting and sounding like a Republican during the campaign.
At the same time, an interesting statistic arose from the
polling data of the presidential election. Clinton, who had enjoyed
wide support from Generation X during his 1992 bid, deepened that
support in this 1996 re-election contest against Senator Bob Dole.
Is this evidence of an insurmountable generation gap between Dole
and the youth of America? What drove young voters to the polls to
vote for a man who was only old enough to be their father? Or
perhaps this statistic has more to do with the experiences and
attitudes of Generation X in relation to the ownership of ideology
hinted at above.
Members of Generation X have not grown up with the hallmarks of
partisanship that influenced the voting patterns of our parents and
grandparents. We can’t identify where we were when Kennedy was shot
… never liked Ike … didn’t get a job with the TVA under
Roosevelt. Most of us were barely cognizant of the Nixon scandal,
and a lot of us probably voted for Carter in elementary school mock
elections. The strongest presidential figure we have experienced in
our young lives was Reagan, and he, like Clinton, is notorious for
his appeal across partisan boundaries.
So what, if anything, determines our voting patterns, and how
does that have anything to do with the ownership of ideology? I
would argue this  in the absence of strong partisanship,
plain and simple, we vote for issues we support and the candidates
that endorse those same issues, be they a Republican or Democrat. A
random sampling of the exit polls of 18-29-year-old voters from
around the country demonstrates that Generation X liked what they
were hearing from President Clinton. In California, Clinton
captured 56 percent of our vote to Dole’s 31 percent; in New Mexico
46 percent to Clinton and 41 percent to Dole; in Georgia 48 percent
to Clinton, 40 percent to Dole; in Wisconsin, 51 percent to
Clinton, 34 percent to Dole; in Maine 54 percent to Clinton, 25
percent to Dole.
If those numbers are frequently close, is that not evidence that
we were appreciative of the candidates ability to look at our
nation through different eyes yet still able to identify the same
problems and propose solutions? That we agree with both men that
welfare as we know it poses a potential problem to the general
economic well-being of the nation? That there is too much crime and
too little emphasis on the family? We voted for Clinton, but we
also, along with our president, often agreed with Dole.
We are a mishmash of cross-partisan issue voters. And while we
contributed to Clinton’s electoral victory, we also helped
Republicans keep control of both the House and Senate. Which leads
to my original mention of the "ownership of ideology." Lacking
strong partisanship and drawn to candidates based upon their stand
on issues we believe in, we don’t buy into the notion that an issue
can "belong" to one party or another, and we voted for a president
who, like us, sees the merit in a multitude of solutions to our
nation’s problems, regardless of whether that problem or solution
traditionally "belonged" to Republicans or Democrats.
I believe Generation X will prove a puzzle to pundits and
pollsters who try to spin us into one party or the other in order
to predict our electoral decisions. I believe we are likely to
continue to vote for candidates who call themselves a "this" but
who act and speak like a "that," and that we will do so without
reservation. I believe we will often vote a mixed ticket. And
sometimes, just to be frustrating, we’ll vote for a Democrat in one
election, and then turn around and vote for a Republican in the
next  and all on the basis of issues.
And consequently, I think our support of Clinton sends a message
to Republicans and Democrats alike who protested Clinton’s
Republican-Democratism and his "stealing of Republican issues" and
"abandonment of Democratic issues" Â get over it. It’s
something we learned in therapy.