Emblazoned at the top of the front page of the website of the New York Times this morning, nestled among breaking world news, was the headline “New Poll Finds That Young Americans Leaning Left.”
Indeed, in the poll, young Americans between the ages of 17 and 29 described themselves as left of their elders: “28 percent described themselves as liberal, compared with 20 percent of the nation at large. And 27 percent called themselves conservative, compared with 32 percent of the general public.”
Aside from the obviousness of the conclusion of the study, perhaps what is most striking about it is the constellation of organizations that conducted it: the New York Times, together with MTV and CBS. (The latter two have worked together on similar polls since 2001.)
The article describes a distinctly more liberal bent on the part of young adults on the issues of gay marriage (44 percent of the young adults surveyed supported it) and health care (62 percent supported some form of universal health care). However, the views of young adults basically aligned with adults on issues like global warming and abortion, the latter of which young adults seemed to view through a marginally more conservative lens, with 37% completely supporting it, 38% advocating it be legal but more strictly regulated and 24% who think it should be illegal, in comparison with the percentage of adults in the study at 39%, 37% and 21% respectively. Considering the disparity between certain partisan viewpoints the young adults who participated in the survey held—and considering the survey’s statistic that 58% of those interviewed claim to be following the 2008 election closely—it will be interesting to see whether, and how, these statistics manifest themselves.