Karlyn Bowman and Andrew Rugg: As the Boomers Turn

Karlyn Bowman is a senior fellow and Andrew Rugg a research associate at the American Enterprise Institute.

Baby boomers who came of age during the social and political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s tended to call themselves Democrats, and as time passed, that identification strengthened. In 1969, far more in the 18- to 29-year-old age cohort — the front end of the baby boom — called themselves Democrats (35%) than Republicans (21%). A decade later, when they were 28 to 39 years old, their identification with the Democratic Party over the GOP was even stronger (45% to 19% in Gallup's surveys).

But starting in the 1980s, attitudes of the baby boomers began changing. Polls found them becoming more family oriented and, over time, more conservative. If this transformation continues, leading more of them to embrace the GOP, it could affect the 2012 election....

When the '60s generation was asked in the 1980s to look back to its supposedly tumultuous youth, the recollections were more tame than many had expected. In a 1986 poll for Time magazine, only a third of the generation said they had favored the social protests and demonstrations of the 1960s and '70s, and only a quarter said they took part in them. A mere 8% of respondents said they used marijuana regularly during the 1960s and '70s, although 26% acknowledged occasional use. And just 18% of those surveyed in a poll done for Rolling Stone magazine in 1987 said they had pursued a countercultural lifestyle in the late '60s....