Yeah, that sounds wrong to me, too. Gen X are the ones who grew up with the effects of Reaganomics and witnessed first-hand the wealth disparity it created.
This is from 2018, but I seriously doubt attitudes towards Trump and Republicans have shifted to the right that much in the last five years: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/the-generation-gap-in-american-politics/
That’s really fascinating, and I deeply respect them for recognizing the problem.
That polling you linked to looks pretty convincing actually. I might have to change my mind.
I’ve seen the claim said a few times, here is the nytimes and there are many other sources discussing it (e.g. this Slate article and this Politico article, etc.). It also makes sense to me: Look at the January 6th insurrectionists. They aren’t young, but they aren’t boomers either. It was dominated by Gen X. Gen X got all the benefits of a social safety net, like cheap university, they got in on affordable housing, but also grew up at a time when even the “left” was represented by hyper capitalist Clinton. They didn’t have a Civil Rights movement, or Bernie Sanders movement.
So I’m willing to change my mind, but I also find it plausible.
I think it’s important to remember that the January 6th insurrection wasn’t representative across any demographics except extremely conservative Republicans and conspiracy theorists. Since generational analysis is already inherently problematic and inexact, I’d hesitate to make blanket statements about the entire age group based on a sample like that.
It may be reasonable to say that in general, people in the age groups often lumped together in “Gen X” are statistically more likely to be conservative than younger people, but that’s about as far as I’d be willing to go.
And the relatively low numbers of boomers at the insurrection may be explained more by their age than anything else. The absolute youngest boomers are turning 60 in the next year. The oldest are almost 80. Going and beating up Capitol police, scaling fences, and breaking into Congress may just be physically too demanding for most of them.
