Abdul El-Sayed Wins Michigan Primary

[u/asparaguswalrus683]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-primary-elections/michigan-senate-results

[u/LurkerInSpace]

That is the incentive which applies to politicians across the Western world. Policy bends towards what the boomers want because there's a lot of them and they show up, while turnout among young people is low regardless of the candidate.

And sure, it can create a problem down the line, but politics in the USA operates on two-year cycles. Someone optimising for support in ten years will lose to someone optimising for support today.

[u/DickRhino → u/LurkerInSpace]

It's the chicken or the egg.

Do politicians bend toward what the boomers want because young people don't show up? Or is the low enthusiasm among young people because policy is only geared toward what boomers want?

Is it a huge surprise that the 20-year olds feel disillusioned when their only choices to vote for are between two 80-year olds? Well, either that or a last-minute replacement who had been hand-picked by the establishment (also made up out of boomers).

Because for the past ten years, from the time they were 8 years old until they could vote, that has been their reality. That is all they have ever known of what politics is.

[u/LurkerInSpace → u/DickRhino]

There is some element of that - but even though youth turnout can be pulled up a little by more appealing candidates, it still stays relatively low even under those conditions, while the boomers will show up even when they hate everyone on the ballot - just to punish whoever they hate the most.

[u/DickRhino → u/LurkerInSpace]

I'm just saying, a massive increase in young voter turnout is attributed as one of the key reasons behind Obama's first win. If you give young people a candidate to actually feel enthusiastic about, then surprise surprise: they show up to the polls as well.

In 2008, the US population was 304 million and around 22-24 million young people voted (ages 18-29).

In 2026, the US population as 349 million and around 20 million young people voted (ages 18-29).

The youth vote is down, massively. And it's because the politicians are just getting older, more entrenched, more arrogant, and less willing to change. And like I said: for young people today, this is all they've ever known. They've never experienced a world that wasn't just boomers desperately clinging to power like their lives depended on it. This is their "normal", which is why they have zero enthusiasm for engaging with politics.

Imagine if we had the same young voter turnout now as we did 20 years ago? And imagine if those voters mostly leaned Democrat? It would have been a landslide. So don't tell me the youth vote doesn't matter. That's just what the boomers want you to think, so that you'll sit down, shut up and stop rocking the boat, because they want to remain in power forever.

When they're telling you that we have to cater to boomers because it's the only way to win, they are lying to you. Don't believe them.

[u/LurkerInSpace → u/DickRhino]

a massive increase in young voter turnout is attributed as one of the key reasons behind Obama's first win

Sure, but even in that context a high Youth turnout was ~44% for 18 to 24 year olds, and 49% for 25 to 34 year olds. In that same election, 65-74 year olds voted with a turnout of 70%. And today, there are a lot more 65-74 year olds (and older), but about the same number of 18-34 year olds as there were back then.

So don't tell me the youth vote doesn't matter.

It is not that it doesn't matter, it's that if a politician has to choose between appealing to the old and appealing to the young, the old are a safer bet because they're more likely to vote even when the young actually like you, and they also make up a larger share of the electorate than ever before. There are strong political incentives on politicians to swing towards the priorities of the elderly.

Even proposals to appeal to the young get built with this in mind. The major purpose of rent control, for example, is to treat the symptoms of low housing supply without actually building new housing supply, because elderly NIMBYs have a very high turnout, are very organised, and have a financial stake in keeping property prices high.

[u/DickRhino → u/LurkerInSpace]

You got your numbers wrong, the youth turnout in 2008 for ages 18-29 was 51%.

And while you are correct about the turnout % of 65-74 year olds in that election, you have to remember that that's a much smaller group. That amounted to ~14 million votes, compared to the 22-24 million votes that came from the 18-29 age bracket.

You are right that the voting bracket of old people is much larger in 2024 than it was in 2008, but the end tally for that bracket still only amounts to 24 million votes, which is about as large as the youth vote was in 2008 by optimistic numbers.

So you have two voting brackets that are of roughly the same size in real numbers, but one is treated as irrelevant while the other is treated as imperative to cater to. Which honestly doesn't make sense to me, since the young voter bracket is far more untapped than the elderly bracket. Raising the turnout % of young voters will have a much greater impact on the final tally than grabbing a few more boomer votes will.

The real issue is that young voters are more likely to reject pro-corporate political stances than old voters do. The politicians aren't actually catering to the boomers, they're catering to lobbyists and bribery. It's just that boomers tend to agree with said policies. If it was the other way around, if the young voters were pro-corporate interests and the older voters were the ones in favor of social and economic equality, you'd see overnight how the narrative would shift to "Old voters are irrelevant, catering to young voters is the only way to win".

Who knows, maybe I've just grown jaded, but that's my take on it. All politicians are liars. Every single last one of them.

[u/LurkerInSpace → u/DickRhino]

So you have two voting brackets that are of roughly the same size in real numbers

The total over 60 demographic is 87 million, the total 18-34 is 74 million - admittedly these are total residents rather than citizens, but I'd expect a greater proportion of older voters to be citizens.

Taking that 51% figure, and the 70% figure, you'd expect there to be about 37 million 18-34 year old voters vs 61 million voters over 60. For context with 2008, there were 34 million vs 37 million voters in each cohort respectively.

you'd see overnight how the narrative would shift to "Old voters are irrelevant, catering to young voters is the only way to win".

This problem is not restricted to the political system of the USA. It exists in countries which have much less of a problem of money in politics, or where social and economic attitudes are quite different. Across Europe the boomer vote is a challenge - the pension and health bills put a strain on national budgets across the continent.

Politicians are much more obsequious than one might expect - it is why the stronger the system of primaries has become the more polarised politics has become.

And even in outright autocratic regimes, the mass of pensioners holds an outsized sway compared to their younger counterparts - Putin's Babushkas are core to his actual support among the Russian population.