8: The New Millennial Party

THIS WAS OUR 2018 TREND FORECAST: The new American political party will not simply mirror the European populist brand. While it will reflect some of those principles, we forecast a “progressive-libertarian” movement that supports lost principles of no foreign entanglements, no government interference into private lives, and a nation whose resources are directed to the public good rather than special corporate interests. 

MID-YEAR UPDATE: Some key elements of this trend that we have forecast are ahead of its time and progressing more slowly and in different directions than we anticipated in the United States.

Millennials and the generations to follow may appear to be politically more passive and reserved than the boomer generation, but in fact, politically active aging boomers are a dying breed.

Among the up-and-coming generations, while not anti-establishment as are their European counterparts, they are nonetheless mad about the current political system, but rather than forming new parties, they are supporting established elements within existing ones.

In making our “New Millennial Party” forecast, we identified 2018 as the year millennials begin to plant the seeds for a new, third party movement that could emerge by the 2020 election.

And while those seeds have not yet sprouted, considering the “civil war,” “Divided States of America,” hostile socio-political environment, with the onset of the next Presidential campaign, the conditions for a new third party movement are ripe.

About four-in-ten millennials and GenXers registered voters describe themselves as Independents, compared to 32 percent of Boomers and 27 percent of “Silents,” who claim themselves as Independents.

And while registered millennial Democrats outnumber their Republican counterparts by almost 10 percentage points, polls at mid-year are showing the millennial generation has turned against Democrats – and doing so just before the mid-term elections.

A Reuters poll of 16,000 millennials, for example, found that support for Democrats among this generation dropped to 46 percent — a nine-point plunge from 55 percent just a year ago.

But despite political party preferences, polls and other emerging data that indicate millennials are moving toward independent candidates, at this mid-term election point, they still vote for candidates that are card-carrying members of established political parties.

CHANGE OF HEART

A disheartened generation, a mere 14 percent of millennials, according to a Harvard study, believe the country is headed in the right direction.

And, a recent NBC News poll found a strong majority of millennials — 71 percent — say the Republican and Democratic parties do such a poor job of representing the American people that a third major party is needed.

Finally, a new Pew Center study found that while older voters are growing more conservative, younger voters are falling somewhere between liberal and libertarian values and voting preferences.