James Carville warns Dems that young people are an unpredictable voting bloc

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville lamented in a video posted Friday that he and the Democratic Party have made some faulty assumptions about young people, and young focus groups are a clear indicator why.In the past decade, the perception of young voters has varied wildly, from being overwhelmingly in favor of far-left identity politics to sharply turning against them.Trends also have found that many younger male voters who supported President Donald Trump in 2024 have since said he failed to uphold his campaign promises, but express little enthusiasm for Democrats, either.“Anybody that’s been around in politics as long as I have, you make monumental mistakes — strategic mistakes,” Carville said on his podcast, Politics War Room.” “Maybe the biggest one I made is I wrote a book saying the Democrats were destined to win for 40 more years because, look — we had the under-30s, we had non-White voters, and that was a growing coalition that would win elections.”“It’s what I call ‘political Presbyterianism,’ that elections are ordained and you can just put something in a f—— computer and it’ll spit out the percent you’re going to get.

It turned out that that was a really, really stupid assumption.”Carville argued that after the 2024 election, the media swung too far in the opposite direction — assuming Republican gains among young voters were permanent and repeating the same analytical mistake.“It was the storyline after the 2024 election, was Trump had made significant gains among younger voters, particularly younger males, non-White males, and made significant Hispanic gains.The press made the mistake that we all make, that I made.

We thought this was a permanent condition.”John Della Volpe, the show’s guest for the episode, spoke about his extensive work with focus groups of young people.The key takeaway from the last 12 months since the election, he said, is that young men are not guaranteed to be Republican and ...