But that wouldn't explain the recent emergence. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a split like this in a while. Which could be a point in your favor. It could also suggest that something about this specific moment (as others mentioned, pandemic and algorithm) is creating this effect.
What is clear, I think, is that Kamala did worse among young voters than recent Dem candidates. So something happened in those four years. Either the new entrants to the cohort are different, or the cohort changed its mind.
One thing I sometimes worry about is, ironically, what JD Vance worries about: birth rates. Not in the same way, of course. I worry that the fundamentalists will outbreed the rationalists. I think that was one significant factor in the right-wing radicalization of Israel.
Religious folk have always been more conservative than secularists; it balanced out when the kids of religious people would go to school and learn what their parents didn't tell them. Liberals had two kids and both were likely liberal; conservatives would have 7 but three would become liberal. Well, that was before Hillsdale college and home-schooling with Prager U materials and states that fund religious indoctrination centers, I'm sorry, charter schools. If we're only going to pick off 1 of those 7, we're going to need more kids. Unfortunately, liberals are so much more likely to be childless or have small families.
I give a couple of my friends shit about this sometime. I say, "I've done my part for the cause -- I'm sending three liberals out into the world. What about you?"
