I believe Ohio votes for governor on the even years that are NOT presidential years and DeWine is in his second term. So that would mean he’d be ineligible for re-election in 2026. I’m not sure when the actual term changes over… maybe January 1, 2027???
I would not judge all older people’s views by those in Ohio. In Canada, the support for abortion rights is higher among older people than in some younger groups. Please see article below with recent polling numbers.
It does hold true in America for all ages 50+ however. 50-64 are actually a little more opposed to abortion than are 65+.
There is a noticeable jump in opposition for 50+, and the youngest group of 18-29 is extremely in support.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1079504/abortion-support-age-level-legalization-us/
Perhaps the oldest cohort has had time for children to grow into adulthood and have more perspective.
Moms for Liberty apparently got shellacked in school board elections across the country, including conservative areas.
6 Likes
There seems to be a fundamental difference between American and Canadian attitudes on abortion by age group. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised as our respective people often have different perspectives.
Abortion was a controversial issue in Canada when I was in my 20’s and our generation fought strongly for expanded abortion rights in the 1970’s. Maybe that explains our current supportive view on it despite our aging? However I would have thought that Americans would have had a parallel experience? Maybe Americans just become more conservative as they age relative to their Canadian counterparts.
It is possible that the less conservative die off earlier, cuz of all the drugs and sex they did when they were younger.
2 Likes
Well there was some sex and drugs north of the border in the 60’s and 70’s as well so you have to come up with a better differentiator.
Would be interesting to contrast our politics over time.
Probably 11 Sept. 2001 would be a large point of divergence. I don’t know how Canada dealt with all that, my assumption would be “pretty upset, but it wasn’t against us, let’s see what America wants to do”. Meanwhile America flew almost into “glass the Middle East because they might’ve been related to this”.
The jingoism following 9/11 resulted in an upswell of popularity for neoconservatives like Dubya and entered us into another generation of strong foreign military interventionism. With the Iraq pullout, we finally wound down from 2 solid decades of being aggressively involved in wars across the globe. During that time, the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, and Roger Ailes (pre-sexual assault) created the Tea Party movement from scratch, weaponizing their anger into political groups that thought they were grassroots rather than manufactured.
The modern MAGA movement, which is currently headed in terms of power by those such as Jordan, MTG, Gaetz was the inevitable endpoint of something like the Tea Party. It’s uninformed, unfiltered hate pretending to be political positions. There are few solid policy positions beyond “ban the Muslims, build a wall, no gays allowed”, etc. In this case it’s “you may not have abortion”, there’s also “you can’t have marijuana”.
Anything against my religion or the morals my great-grandparents held is evil and we must use the government to quash it.
3 Likes
Old frats in the USA skew socially conservative. Not sure if that holds in Canada or other countries. Boomers and GenXers seem the worst.
1 Like
I wonder if there’s a male/female gap there? Like if older women are less opposed to abortion than older men, then as the older men die off faster… that leaves a disproportionate share of older women.
It would be interesting to see that broken down by both age and sex. Might be one of those Simpson’s paradox things, but impossible to say without delving into the data.
Both Rastiln and YT have suggested excellent differentiators.
Many Canadians also died in the WTC on 9/11 but we viewed it as an attack on America. When Dubya suggested attacking Iraq, there were huge demonstrations here against Canadian troops participating with the USA on an invasion. It just didn’t seem to be a good idea. There were a lot of folks older than me marching in those protests. They were so large that our Prime Minister did a flip flop and withdrew Canada’s support for the US invasion. In contrast, there seemed to be much support in the USA for invading Iraq.
Canadian universities do not generally have the types of fraternities that are found in the US. My university has actually banned fraternities and sororities for over 100 years on the grounds they were counterproductive to an inclusive learning environment. Universities here do not have big sports programs either: no athletic scholarships let alone the perks and now cash that many US university athletes receive. I think the absence of these things may help to promote a slightly different culture?
We also do not have anywhere the level of conservative media and donors that the US has. Our politicians tend to be more to the left on average than American ones. We don’t have a core group of really conservative politicians. Fundamentalist Christians have relatively little influence in Canada
1 Like
They might be on both.
“Life is worth fighting for. As a grandparent of eight, the life of a baby is always worth the fight,” Huffman said. “The national abortion industry funded by wealthy out-of-state special interests spent millions to pass this radical language that goes far past abortion on demand. This isn’t the end. It is really just the beginning of a revolving door of ballot campaigns to repeal or replace Issue 1.”
Since Issue 2 is an initiated statute, lawmakers can easily change it − and were promising to do so even before the election. House Speaker Jason Stephens, R-Kitts Hill, said Tuesday night that the Legislature should reallocate tax revenue from the adult-use program to invest more in jail construction and law enforcement training.
Expanding on the school board results:
The Daily Beast reported that the group either directly endorsed or promoted school board candidates in six states — Alaska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia — yet lost a bulk of those races with the exception of two in Alaska. M4L had a slate of candidates win elections in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 2021, but the extreme nature of the group prompted most candidates seeking reelection to ask M4L to not explicitly endorse them. Still, the five Republicans running for the Central Bucks School District that M4L “recommended” voters cast ballots for were swept by Democrats, according to the Beast.
Elsewhere in Bucks County, Republicans running for five open seats in the Pennridge School District — who backed an agenda dubbed “Project Pennridge” that would have required students use bathrooms and play for sports teams associated with their biological sex — were also swept by five Democrats.
It sounds like yesterday was mostly a good day for democracy.
2 Likes
It’s more intuitive to me that old people would be more anti-abortion than young. Even if we assume they all are equally likely to be against abortion on religious grounds people are going to tend to be more wound up about an issue that might actually affect them. So sure I think abortion is murder but if I need an abortion then things are different.
Once you’re older you have no such worries.
And they don’t have to worry about dealing with all those unwanted children down the road.
Supporting theory that I believe is stronger than “affecting you”: Likelihood of being religious goes up with age, as does conviction in the religion (absolutely certain vs. somewhat certain in your religion, etc.)
Given that the primary argument against abortion is religion-based, it makes obvious sense. There are possible arguments against abortion not based on religion, but they’re fewer and weak.
Really? Maybe this is a US thing as the church is more important as an institution in the US?
Most Canadians I know in my age group who went to Sunday School as children started to doubt their religion at university and lost it entirely in later adulthood. I see a fair amount of spirituality in folks my age but that is different from a set of religious beliefs. Canadian church attendance is very low relative to the US.
Are you in Ontario? In my experience Ontario feels very equivalent to New England. I’ve never been to Alberta but that seems like Texas and British Columbia to Washington/Oregon. I wonder how different Ontario is from New England, Alberta from Texas, etc. (i.e. maybe just a difference in mix)?
Can’t find the study I was looking at earlier about certainty of God, but found from a U of Chicago study: “43% of those aged 58 and older are certain God exists, compared to 23% of those 27 and younger.”
The study I found was showing that for younger cohorts, around 70% of religious people were certain God exists and 27% were somewhat certain. As they aged that became more like 80% and 17%.
Belief in any religion goes up significantly with age in the US.