Studies at the bipartisan policy center. Of change our states event, an event we have been doing for 40 years that even goes back a couple of years beyond that. Partneredchange is a effort with the center for american progress, the Brookings Institution, and the Voter Study Group of the Democracy Fund, and also, i want to mention the participation of the American Enterprise and said to. American enterprise institute. That group has been collecting election information, combined with demographic information, thinking about the future of our elections. Each year, we have new data, a new report. Says,nk, as the name about the state, not only our country, but how the states are changing over time. We also have different scenarios as to what might happen. In one way, change Voter Preferences in another. Just like every year, we have an interesting new report. We will hear from the authors of that and walk through that. We also have a particular theme this year we are emphasizing generational change. We have now seen jens he enter z entertorate gen the electorate. All of our generations are moving through the electorate. Addressess report that aspect, how things are changing, how they might change, and some of the scenarios, whether voter change their attitudes when the age into different parts of life. They age into different parts of life. We are going to have a presentation of the report. The coauthors of the report are all are three of our important partners. I will mention first someone who is not able to join us because of some technical difficulties this morning, ruby has been with ruy hasthe beginning been with us from the beginning as a senior fellow for the center for american progress. Ruy, where star you cant join us today. We will be talking about your work and look forward to joining you next years report. The other coauthors with us will walk through some of the key findings of that report. Robert griffin. A Research Director of the Democracy FundVoter Study Group. And bill frey. A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution metropolitan policy program. He spent a number of years working on those issues at the university of michigan. He also has a new book, which you can get. I am going to shortly turn it over. Let me also tell you about the second part of the program briefly. Robre going to, with rob, and i are going to have a discussion with two excellent with Kristen Soltis anderson and tara mcgowan. To you forward submitting questions to the program and speaking with you then. Rob . Robert good morning, everyone. I am here to do introduction work, along with john, to lay the land for everything. As john mentioned, this is our sixth year doing this report. Those of you who have been with us for a long time, thanks for being here. Its nice to see you, even if remotely. For those who are kind of new to the project, i thought it might give you some tips about what we are doing. I think there are essentially two things that are really important to take away. Is that what we are all about is trying to understand the potential impact of demographic change. There have been changes that have been happening to the country, both in terms of racial diversity, educational status, how old it is, the age of those, the electorate, that have been pretty dramatic over the last 40 years. We expect these changes to continue to happen. What we are trying to do is get a handle on the picture of what the future might look like, or various futures could look like. And the second thing that i think is important to take away is that we are not predicting the future. We actually dont like that word here. We like to say the word simulating the future. Let major raw line between those two concepts for you. Let major raw a line between those two concepts for you. When people are predicting the future, they are walking away with, this is what the authors think, this is what they are sure is going to happen. We are really never in the situation. We are not sure about one of the various things we are talking about that are definitely going to happen. What we are interested in doing is taking some of the popular narratives, the popular ideas about various demographic had generational change might change the future, and simulating it out. How generational change might change the future, and simulating it out. Simulating the future, not predicting it. Giving people the contours of the future, what it could look like, rather than telling people , this is exactly what its going to be. With that in mind, lets start diving in with a story you might already know. This is something we covered for the last year. Especially just am a graphic change, how is the country changing demographically . , there are three big things that are happening. Two of them are that the country is becoming has been becoming more racially diverse, and its becoming more educated. And how that plays out over the we are years is that going to see a decline in the number of eligible voters, so those who were 18 and older and citizens of the u. S. , who are white, noncollege, they are going to go from 46 in 2016, we to be 40 of eligible voters today, than by 2036, down to 34 . This is a really big change. Shift for adramatic group that has dominated american politics for a really long time but is in demographic decline. Are locked in among latino and hispanic americans, as well as asian and blown into other racial and ethnic groups. But these groups are going to continue to grow over time. White noncollege and African Americans these groups are relatively speaking, demographically stable. Thexpect them to make up same amount of eligible voters over time Going Forward into the future. It doesnt mean they are not growing. It does not mean they are changing in size or anything like that. It means everybody else is growing, too, at the same time. These groups are staying somewhat stable. As we look at the statebystate, one of the really important things to understand is how different some of these changes are in different parts of the country. What you are looking at on this slide is all 50 states. You are looking at the percent of people in that state among eligible voters who are people of color. The black, latino, and hispanic people, asian, those longing to other racial ethnic groups. What you can see is two things, one, the level of racial diversity in all 50 states actually varies considerably. Theres a lot of differences between states. They are all moving in the same direction. Over the next 16 years, we expect just about every state to , asme more racially diverse a result of demographic changes that are happening in the country. In some places, thats going to be bigger, in sum, smaller. Some places are starting off with high diversity already, and others are catching up, they are much lower on the bar here, but everyone is changing together. This is sort of important. Keep this figure in mind once we look at generational change. There are some interesting differences. One of the things we are seeing is each of these things become more diverse and slowly over time, more and more are going to be passing the 50 mark, such that they become minority majority states, as people sometimes call them. The other thing that is happening to the country, just a finish of, just to finish off, is the age distribution of the country is getting older. There are more americans were sickly five years old and over, who are just going to be who are 65 years old and over, or just going to be [indiscernible] overtime. More people are making it to 65 years old. They are living a little bit longer after that. You also have a big generational bubble that is the baby boomers, moving into the 65 category. The people occupying that space should be increasing over time. It has been happening for some time now. Those of the stories you might be more familiar with. It is something we covered in the past by viewers, relatively well discussed. Something that people talk about less, sometimes, is what generational change might look like. People have a big sense about, some generations are increasing in size, some are declining, but they also dont have a good picture of what that looks like in their head. Lets start off with some definitions here. Starting with the oldest generation, the generation one before 1945, baby boomers, born to 1964. Have been one of the largest generations for a number of decades now. Millennials, then what we are calling for this report gen z plus. Theres no generation that comes after that has been decided yet. For the purpose of this report, whatever you see whenever you hear us talking about gen z, were talking about everyone one after 1997. This represents the earliest and newest and coming generation that is coming into the fore. Essentially, why we are focusing on generations here there are two big things that are important to observer about this. The first is that each generation has really Strong Political differences between them, and we expect these differences to be kind of kind of sticky. These are the margins for each generation in the 2016 election. As you can see, you have the baby boomers and silent generation being notably conservative. The value you are looking at on lean of ais is the particular generation. This is sort of the difference between the two. Youve got baby boomers leading toward the public and party toward the Republican Party, z being morerough democratic leaning. Z being through gen more democratic leaning. There are just the differences between them. The second piece of the puzzle, we expect them to be sticky. What we mean by that is the generational means, the political affiliations people have, we expect them overtime to stay with these generations. Does that mean they cannot shift their vote from election to election . No. People can shift their vote. We are seeing that in 2020. Does that mean that events cannot sort of shifted these peoples vote around . No. Does it mean people will not grow more conservative as they aged . Age . No. But some of these characteristics might stick around a little bit. We might think about them as change relative to the starting places. Andcially for gen z millennials, notably democratic, notably liberal. The other reason we focus on generations this year, we think there is something of a turning point when it comes to sort of a generational story. What youre looking at here is, if you add up the percentage of eligible voters who are gen z and millennial and you chart it going into the future, and if you add up the number of eligible voters of the silent generation and track over time, that is that blue line. In 2020, we are just at the Tipping Point of those two generations crisscrossing. That is to say that just about this year, the number of eligible voters who belong to gen z and the millennial generation is as much as the boomer and silent generation. Silent voters. So what we are doing this graph is taking that 2016 turnout rates that happen for racial and educational and age groups and were applying those forward to these groups and Going Forward in the future. Now, is this what is going to happen precisely . Baselinet is a decent for thinking about the future, what might occur Going Forward in the future. And if these groups show up at the same rates they did in 2016 were looking at just the very connection being the one thats sort of the Tipping Point between these two between these groups of generations um being sort of the dominant group within american politics. Again, with gen z and millennials just in 2024 were just one election away from being the exact same size as boomer and silent generation now again. Think back to that other chart i showed you before. This is the same type of chart and again so this is all 50 states plus the United States in red. What im showing you is the percent of the population of eligible voters in each state thats gen z and millennial so in contrast to racial change in the states which as you saw in that other figure can be high it can be low. Theres a lot of diversity between states. Theres actually far less diversity between states and the growth patterns are also much more similar between the states. Theres some variations some states being a little bit older. Maine and West Virginia and florida older. And you have some states or districts like the district of columbia which are notably younger but by and large these are actually pretty similar across states and the rates of change Going Forward into the future are pretty similar and so i think the big takeaway here is that you know to the extent that we think about racial change in the states being important, it is caveated by the fact that its really its not occurring in every state. There are just some places that are far less racially diverse. Generational change is a wave that crashes on every shore its a change thats coming to every state in the country. To the extent that we study these things we think theyre important. It is notable to know that this is happening everywhere. Again these are not predictions , about exactly what the future is going to be. These are a discussion of various narratives theyre us putting numbers behind some of the concepts that people have about the future so we can start to chart out okay lets take this idea seriously. What does that look like. Its take some of what people are saying about what they think about the future that might happen to millennials or gen z and putting numbers behind its we can understand what might be the contours of the future. Again, not predicting it. I will walk quickly through those four generations sorry the forcing relations peers first, the no generational effects simulation. Is happening is assuming there are no generational effects. It is a nice baseline for thinking about okay what does the world look like if we dont take generational effects into account. So we assume essentially that lets take the 2016 turnout , rates and support rates for these race, age groups on a statebystate basis and lets assume a stay constant Going Forward into the future so the only think that is changing as geographic composition of the states themselves. Again, roy moore racially diverse, getting more educated, becoming older. So this is sort of a baseline to think about um the some of these generational models how it compares to them once we start taking generations into account. The second model does take those generational effects into account. It says as i thought extrema, what if generations continue to vote exactly as they did going into the future . The boomer generation will vote as it did. Millennials will but as it did and gen z will vote as it did in 2016. We are going to assume stability in generational preferences Going Forward into the future. Again, is this absolutely the truth and what is going to happen . No, probably not. But it is a thought experiment about what if we take these generational cohort partisan leaning and think that they might extend forward into the future. The third simulation is that general generational effects decline with age. Thatwe assume is generations as people hypothesize become more , conservative as the agent. So were going to essentially assume here that all of these generations are going to continue to become more conservative and lean more republican going for into the future. So we start off with their 2016 support rates right so how they voted in the 2016 election and then cycle over cycle theyre just going to become a little more conservative as they age into the electorate. We have the fourth scenario which is essentially what if generations stay the same but what if theyre supposed millennial generation that becomes more conservative. Because even right now gen z is in the electorate but it is not that large and we do not know anything about necessarily everything in the world about these people who are under 18, who belong to that generation. Still some people have hypothesized that this generation might come in more conservative at some point so we again explore this with this fourth scenario. I will talk through these through a series of charts. That chart on the left youre looking at the democratic popular vote margin. This is the percent of the vote at a National Level that is going to Democratic Candidates, under the assumptions of these various simulations. So, positive values there. Above the zero line, wins for are the Democratic Party and the popular vote. Values below that red zero line are wins for the Republican Party. And on the right graph are the number of Democratic Electoral atlege votes, the redline 278. So, given a democratic win it would be above that line Going Forward into the future and below that line would be a republican when in that year and simulation. Very first scenario we play out is again this note generational effect simulation. And compared to 2016 what we see is that the democratic margin is even larger than it was in 2016 on the basis of just demographic change. Again, the country is becoming more racially diverse, it is becoming more educated and it is becoming older. Even in 2020 we would expect the vote margin to go up for a democratic candidate given these demographic changes. So at a popular vote again Hillary Clinton won by about two points uh we have a democratic candidate here coming in just below five, around four points during among the Electoral College what we would actually see is if we played this out in the states that is to say if we take all these democratic demographic changes and we play them out state by state it would actually result in an Electoral College type. So if we were in a world where nothing was changing about peoples voter behaviors just , the demographics that were happening in the future, we would expect even that to move the Electoral College to a 269 to 269 scenario a tie essentially in the Electoral College on