Almost 20 years ago a popular book (The Emerging Democratic Majority by Judis and Teixeira) claimed Democrats would win out because demographics trends favored them. It turned out not to be true.
Now we see that inarguable demographic trends favor Republicans. How, you may ask? Because across the developed world the birth rate is below replacement and thus the population grows older every year. And population cohorts become more conservative as they grow older. As so many historic wordsmiths have famously paraphrased:
If you aren't liberal at 25 you have no heart; if you aren't conservative at 35 you have no brain.
Think of this as a corollary of Miles' Law which holds that "where you stand depends on where you sit." To the young who have little, government handouts look wonderful. To the no-longer-young who have to pay for government largesse, handouts look like a deleterious, unearned transfers of their hard-earned income to the undeserving.
As fewer people are born, the young will be outnumbered by the no-longer-young who will resist efforts to give their wealth to the often idle young. This should benefit Republicans as older cohorts become numerically larger than younger ones. Plus older citizens are also more likely to vote than young adults.
