Baby Boomers, those people born during the approximately ten years after World War II, are beginning to lose their hold on American elections, as they age and sadly, die. Younger generations are now coming into their own, overtaking the older generations.
This conclusion was reached by a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center, Richard Fry, who predicted this result last year.
According to Fry, Baby Boomers and those older than them, were the majority of voters in every single presidential election since 1980. The 2016 elections revealed that for the first time in 36 years Boomers and those older cast just less than half of the 137.5 million total votes. Millennials, combined with Generation Xers represented a small majority of the votes cast, with 69.6 million.
Those who are between age 18 and 35 in 2016 are known as Millennials, since they were born around the turn-of-the-century, or the time of the new millennium. They cast 34 million votes in the 2016 November election, representing a large increase from the 18.4 million votes they cast in 2008.
Interestingly, even though Millennials outnumber the GenX cohort, who were ages 36 to 51 in 2016, GenXers still cast more votes, with 35.7 million who voted in 2016. It is expected that the size of the Millennial vote will overtake that of the GenXers by 2020, especially since the Millennial generation is larger in absolute numbers and in the number of years it encompasses.
