I had one of my co workers (almost retired) tell me that the Libertarians would be blocked from progress as long as the elderly perceived them as a threat to social (in)security. It got me thinking. We always hear that there are "too many elderly voters" and that opposing them would be "political suicide," so I went to the U.S. Census web site and got their population predictions for 1996.

The biggest surprise is that there are potentially 10 million more voters age 34 and below than there are voters 55 and over. I wonder if some of the apathy in the younger voters comes from always being told that they are powerless against the older voters. In fact, exactly the opposite is true. What would the reaction be if suddenly the headlines blared "CENSUS DATA SHOWS GEN-X COULD CONTROL NEXT ELECTION"?

This page was last updated 07/02/00 01:51 PM