[Robert J. Fouser] The millennial wave arrives

The polls and prediction markets showed that Republicans would suffer losses in the US midterm elections, but few predicted the scale of the defeat. Democrats won substantial majorities in both houses of Congress, putting them in a strong position to assert congressional authority in the hope of reining in President Donald Trump.

The blue tsunami left Republican wreckage across the nation, but the biggest shock came in Texas, where Democrats won a Senate seat, the governorship and all major statewide executive offices up for election, and took control of the Texas House of Representatives. The sweep moves Texas and its 40 electoral votes into the swing state category for the first time since President Jimmy Carter carried the state in 1976.

What does the election mean for the future of US politics and for relations with South Korea? To answer this question, we need to look at two demographic trends that are changing US society: generational change and ethnic diversity.

The desire for generational change energized many millennial and Generation Z voters. Older millennials are now entering their mid-40s while Gen Z continues to reach voting age. Taken together, the edges of these two generations now make up a huge group of voters aged 18 to 45. Voter turnout is traditionally lower among younger voters, but both generations are voting in larger numbers as they age. And unlike older generations, their loyalty to political parties is weaker.

Burdened by economic uncertainty, millennial and Gen Z voters swung heavily to the Democrats in the midterms. They want action on inflation and the high cost of living. They blame Trump for the war against Iran and are critical of US support for Israel. They are tired of older establishment politicians in both political parties and want change.

Donald Trump, along with former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, was born in 1946, the first year of the baby boom generation. As the oldest boomers turn 80, their numbers are declining rapidly. The large number of conservative retirees in Florida kept the state in Republican hands by narrow margins. Over the next few election cycles, Florida, with 30 electoral votes, will increasingly look like Texas or Georgia.

The US is becoming increasingly diverse as baby boomers die off. The immigration boom that began in the 1980s has contributed to a surge in ethnic and racial diversity. In Texas, for example, Latinos make up 40 percent of the population and are the largest ethnic group, whereas non-Latino Whites make up only about 39 percent of the population. Trump's harsh immigration policies alienated many Latinos, causing them to shift dramatically toward the Democrats.

Black voters, meanwhile, turned out in large numbers across the South out of anger at Trump's redistricting push. This helped Democrats win the South Carolina Senate seat and, as of this writing, maintain a small lead in the Mississippi Senate race.

The pattern was clear: Democrats did better in states with diverse, younger, and growing populations, whereas Republicans did better in states with aging, mostly white populations. This gives Democrats a strong structural advantage over Republicans for 2028 and beyond.

What do these trends mean for relations between South Korea and the United States? In the short term, they suggest Democratic dominance. Over the next two years, Trump will continue to weigh Republicans down, making it hard for them to mount a comeback. The White House has tended to change to the other party at the end of an unpopular lame duck's term.

South Korea should assume that a Democrat will most likely win the presidency and keep control of Congress in 2028. The new president could well be a millennial and will almost certainly be younger with a different worldview. Unlike Biden, who promised a return to normal, the new president will be forward-looking and willing to try new policies that upend traditional left-right ideologies.

Most demographers define the millennial generation as those born between 1981 and 1996, which means the oldest millennials were only 7 years old when Seoul held the Olympics in 1988. They came of age in the 2000s, when South Korea had recovered from the Asian financial crisis and Hallyu began to take Asia by storm.

Millennials are the first generation to grow up viewing South Korea as a prosperous democratic partner of the US rather than a weak client state. This bodes well for the future of the relationship regardless of which party is in power.

Robert J. Fouser

Robert J. Fouser, a former associate professor of Korean language education at Seoul National University, writes on Korea from Providence, Rhode Island. He can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed here are the writer's own. — Ed.

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