Every 4 years about 3 million people age into the voting group and 3 million Americans pass away. In the space of just 4 years, the voting age population changes by 24 million and by an incredible 48 million or about 30% in 8 years.
Demographic changes in the American family are not the only thing that matters in elections by any means. But they are the single, biggest force in American politics.
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteI think you are double-counting in this case, by counting both the new voters and the deceased ones. As an example, if you had a class of 25 students and "Tiffany" was replaced by "Justin" you would have only changed 1/25 of the class, not 2/25's.
Looking at it another way, to achieve a full 100 per cent turnover of the electorate at your rate of 30 per cent every eight years would take 3 1/3 eight-year periods, or about 26 years. I'm sure the average voter votes for more than 26 years in his or her lifetime.
Perhaps you are right. But I don't think so but will check it out. There are 311 million people living in America. If you assume a life expectancy of 80 years and even distribution of population in each age cohort that would mean close to 4 million people in each year of the 80. I believe about 3 million people become 18 each year and about 3 million die each year.
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