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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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It is possible that millennials are becoming conservative at exactly the same rate as previous generations even though they are not voting for conservative parties at the same rate as previous generations. Parties are not static ideologies or sets of policy goals. Parties compete for voters, modifying and triangulating their platforms and rhetoric over time.

In the US, Republicans and Democrats have fought each other to a pretty consistent 50/50 stalemate in nationwide votes for several decades, modifying their views on all sorts of issues along the way to maintain that equilibrium. As the overall population has gotten older over time, the equilibrium "stalemate age" (the age when a voter is equally likely to vote for either party) also gets older over time. To put it another way, as the electorate ages it becomes increasingly "cost effective" for the Republican party to cater to older voters, which makes it easier for the Democratic party to attract and retain people in their 30s who might otherwise be potential Republican voters.