I’ve seen some analysis that points directly to home ownership as a predictor of the shift in personal politics later in life. Fewer Millennials own homes than older generations; that’s mostly because of the 2008 Financial Crisis and it’s knock-on effects to generational wealth. Home ownership can create financial stability (highly regulated commodity one can borrow against in hard times) and not having that leaves one more exposed to economic downturns. Economic downturns over the last fifty to one hundred years have been consistently due, in part, to the lacking of (or the ending of) regulations as well as lack luster or non existent government intervention. The one party that’s been whole-hog on deregulation and haphazard/lackadaisical intervention for most of Millennials’ lives has been Republicans, so they (rightly) get the blame.

There’s also been the shift from traditional media to newer sources (both for the better and worse) and younger people are more likely than older to tune into those new media outlets. It’s finances driving that shift in media consumption… for instance (anecdotally), I’m in my late thirties and I do not know anyone my age and younger who has a cable subscription. Most would say they don’t need one, that it is undesirable compared to streaming services, but the general vibe is that it’s too expensive for what you get (streaming services are seen as expensive as a whole, but the ability to pick and choose what you but into is seen as enough of a plus to either cut the cord or never have the cord in the first place). Meanwhile, I know tons of folks older than me seemingly addicted to cable news, which almost universally skews right-wing. Sure CNN is mostly centrist and MSNBC tows a liberal-center left line, but there’s CNBC, Bloomberg, News Nation, FNC, and NewsMax all of which pull center right to far right… seemingly to chase that aging cable viewer demographic.