About 6 in 10 Americans say they feel politically connected by generation

By Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN

(CNN) — Americans feel more politically connected by generation than they do by race or gender, CNN polling data finds.

Nearly 6 in 10 say they share a lot of common interests and concerns with other people of their generation, according to a late-summer CNN survey. By contrast, fewer than half of Americans, 43%, say they feel politically connected to others of their gender, and 39% to others of the same race.

“My generation is one of the first ones looking at an economy that will be worse for us than for our parents,” said Gabriel, a 21-year-old college senior from California who participated in the survey and said he felt a strong political connection to others his age. “Affordability and home ownership and growing up during the pandemic and all those issues make what’s important to my generation probably very different than older ones.”

It’s not just young Americans who feel that way: most in every age group think they have a lot in common with their generation. In fact, those 65 and older are actually 10 points likelier than adults younger than 35 to say that their generation is politically relevant to them.

Americans’ attachment to their respective generations, however, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. About 1 in 5 Americans said they felt politically connected across all three sets of demographics tested in the survey – generation, gender and race – with nearly half (46%) saying they felt politically connected to others across more than one demographic.

“Everyone identifies with a ton of different social groups at different times – throughout the day, even,” said Samara Klar, a political scientist at the University of Arizona who studies political identity.

People’s connection to some facet of their political identity is often strongest when that aspect is under threat, research has found. But sharing a generation doesn’t mean agreeing politically or even agreeing on whether those generational ties are important.

Partisanship also plays a major role: In CNN’s poll, that sense of connectedness is weaker among Americans whose partisan views diverge from the positions most common in their group.

Adults younger than 35 who feel a strong sense of generational connection, for instance, are mostly Democrats or Democratic-leaning, and more than half said they were angry about President Donald Trump’s policies and frustrated by politics more broadly. By contrast, those older than 65 who felt a generational connection were far more Republican than those who didn’t.

Women are only a few points likelier than men to call gender politically important, 46% to 40%. But women who feel a sense of gender solidarity are far more Democratic-leaning than those who don’t; while the pattern is reversed among men.

A 64% majority of Black Americans and 55% of Latino Americans say they share political concerns with others of the same race, falling to 28% among White adults. Those White Americans who do say they share political connections with others of their race are largely GOP-aligned – 63% belong to or lean toward the GOP – while most Black and Latino Americans who feel a sense of racial connection are aligned with the Democratic Party.

A few other differences by political connection emerge in the survey. Younger people who are more connected to their generation are more engaged in politics than those who are not, but there isn’t a similar divide for older adults. Both younger and older Americans who felt connected to their generations, though, were more likely than those who didn’t to say that they could think of a political figure who spoke for people like them.

White Americans who feel a political connection by race are more likely than those who don’t, 42% to 24%, to say that growing diversity is threatening to US culture. For people of color, that pattern is reversed. While far fewer people of color see diversity as threatening, it’s a view more commonly held by those who don’t feel a connection by race (28%) than it is by those who do (13%).

Some Americans, meanwhile, may not feel that any aspect of their own background matters much politically at all: About one-quarter said they didn’t feel politically connected to others along any of the three factors we asked about in the poll.

That sense of disconnect was particularly prevalent among those who are also disconnected from politics in other ways: “true” political independents who don’t lean toward either party, and people who said they didn’t pay attention to politics at all.

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