Here Comes the Yumpies

Younger, better-off, better-educated voters go for Gary

Call them the Me generation or Baby Boomers or Yumpies (young upwardly mobile professionals). By any label, younger, more affluent, better-educated voters appear to have embraced Gary Hart's "new generation" politics. On Super Tuesday, they provided Hart with his most consistent support, according to NBC exit polls. In Georgia, for instance, Hart lost overall but led by a wide margin among 25-to 34-year-olds (28% to 19%), college graduates (29% to 20%) and those earning more than $40,000 (37% to 25%). Conceded a top Mondale aide: "There's little question about the numbers."

Mondale, by contrast, appealed to older, poorer and less-schooled voters. Despite losing Florida to Hart, Mondale finished ahead of him among those over 65 (43% to 42%) and those who did not graduate from high school (45% to 36%). He won Georgia by only 4%, but buried Hart, 48% to 20%, among those who did not complete high school, and 42% to 22% among the over-65s.

The 34-year-olds who are voting for Hart in the 1984 primaries are in many cases the 18-year-olds who rang doorbells for Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and the 22-year-olds who cast their ballots for George McGovern in 1972. They are still skeptical of Establishment candidates and political bosses. But they have shed idealism for pragmatism, and liberalism for moderation. Many Yumpies seem more interested in making money for themselves than in redistributing it to the poor. "They tend to be entrepreneurial," says Tom Kiley, a political consultant in Boston. Notes Pollster Daniel Yankelovich: "They see that the liberals and conservatives haven't really solved the problems." The post-Viet Nam generation is wary of the U.S.'s trying to save the rest of the world. They look at El Salvador and see another potential quagmire.

Hart, as a loner who stands outside of the Washington old-boy network, skeptical of New Deal social programs and U.S. intervention abroad, naturally appeals to this group. He began courting it in his first Senate race in 1974 with a blunt campaign slogan: "They've Had Their Turn. Now It's Ours."

Baby Boomers are stronger in the prosperous states they tend to migrate to, like Florida and Colorado, than in the industrial states they left behind, like Pennsylvania and Ohio, both of which have important primaries coming up. In the long term, the 77 million people born between 1946 and 1964--one-third of the U.S. population--could be an extremely potent force. "The group is so big that it represents a real opportunity for a candidate or even a whole party to create an entirely new governing coalition with as much stability as the old New Deal coalition," says Republican Pollster Robert Teeter, who predicts that such a voting bloc could last for 30 years.

Young voters, however, have a history of low turnouts, and Teeter doubts that Hart is sufficiently charismatic to bring them out in large enough numbers to win the presidency this year. But by 1988, he predicts, they will be politically mature and ready to rally behind Hart--or some other candidate. As Yankelovich points out, the Baby Boomers' pragmatism extends to politicians. "They are unforgiving when it comes to lack of success," he says. "They have no real loyalties. They have big enthusiasms that they can kiss off tomorrow."