Age and Political Affiliation

Image by Hillary.

With discussions of politics dominating news outlets and water cooler conversation, sometimes people bring up this question:

Does a person's age influence political affiliation?

Let's take the Baby Boomers as an example (those born 1946 to 1964).

As a group, do they affiliate more with liberal, conservative, or even moderate political ideals?

In January of 2015, the Gallup company posted an article showing how conservative political affiliation increases in age in the polling of these four voting-eligible generations: Millennials (28%), Generation X (35%), Baby Boomers (44%), and Traditionalists (48%).

Why?

First of all, several factors can influence trends in the political affiliation of an age group. Demographers consider many influences, for example the age effect or the period effect.

But before we look at those demographers' theories, let's look at more poll / survey data: