As of 2016 Millennials are the largest voting generation in the country and, over the next 8 years, will begin to cement their voting habits for the rest of their lives. Similar to how the Baby Boomers have dominated the last 30 years, the Millennials are likely to control our political landscape until the mid 2050s, or so. But why is this important for libertarians?
FIrst, because voting is actually shown to be habit-forming (Footnote 1). This means that if people participate in the voting process at their youngest possible opportunity, they are more likely to vote throughout the rest of their lives. And if we don't fight statist belief in this generation, we are likely not going to end the state purposefully and without a catastrophic collapse. With Millennials being the largest voting population, we want them to vote. And we want them to vote for us instead of either of the old parties.
By targeting Millennials NOW we have a fighting chance to defeat statism. We know we only have until a person's late-20s to cement their voter affiliation for the rest of their lives (Footnote 2). And since the oldest Millennials are already 35-36 years old, we're running out of time. We won't be the only ones with this idea, but with the Baby Boomer power structure still firmly entrenched in the old parties, the Libertarian Party is uniquely positioned to allow for a Millennial re-branding.
One way to create this re-branding is to focus on running young candidates and electing young people to officer positions within the party. Millennials are the first generation who grew up developing friendships and relationships with people via digital contact. Unlike the Baby Boomers, this digital connectedness wasn't something that we learned later in life. It was the norm for us from as far back as we have memories. As a result, we are less likely to think of our "community" as a geographic region - like a neighborhood - and more likely to think of community as "our meeting place of ideas on the internet." Think about that for a second. We are the first generation in all of human history to not attach the concept of community to our geographic location. This stark difference between us and even our closest friends from Gen X means that our upbringing is uniquely married to every generation which comes behind us. We need an army of non-statist Millennials to gather as much political experience as possible in order to entice the majority of that generation to vote - and vote for us - if we are to defeat political statism this century.
This article is a part of a series of articles called "Libertarians Should Stop Trying to Appeal to Voters" which starts here: https://steemit.com/finallyfreeamerica/@benfarmer/libertarians-should-stop-trying-to-appeal-to-voters
Footnote 1- (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1540-5907.00038)
