Uh, I think you are forgetting something, Professor

In the Wall Street Journal today, Professor Arthur C. Brooks of Syracuse writes:

The Fertility Gap
Liberal politics will prove fruitless as long as liberals refuse to multiply.

Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.

So far, so good. But then, he writes:

Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today's problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020--and all for no other reason than babies.

No, California will not tip dramatically conservative for demographic reasons over the next 14 years. That's because there is a huge number of immigrants and their children who are in the pipeline to become voters. In California, Hispanics and Asians vote about 70-30 Democratic. Furthermore, GOP family values issues won't pay off in California because not enough young people can afford to have a family.

I've explained all this in my essays on "Affordable Family Formation."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer