New NPI report: The Progressive Politics of the Millennial Generation

Peter Leyden, the Director of our New Politics Institute just announced our new NPI paper on The Progressive Politics of the Millennial Generation. Check out the text (and links to the paper) below:

One of the most underappreciated assets for progressives in the early 21st century is the rise of the young Millennial Generation, the biggest generation in American history, and one that is clearly trending progressive and voting Democratic in large numbers.

The New Politics Institute released a new report that is a comprehensive look at almost all available surveys and polls that have tried to figure out the politics of this important new generation of young people born in the 1980s and 1990s. The cumulative evidence shows that this generation is overwhelmingly progressive and unusually engaged in politics.

The Millennial Generation has the potential to become a core constituency of the progressive movement and could help sustain political majorities for a long time. By the 2008 election nearly 50 million of them will be eligible to vote, and by the 2016 election, the entire generation of 82 million people will be of age.

No one in politics can afford to ignore this emerging generation born between the years of 1978 and 1996. And they are not just passive political consumers, but actors who are adept with the powerful new participatory tools that NPI has long championed.

The report was released at an event in Washington DC this past Thursday, June 21st. Video from the event will be posted on the New Politics Institute website shortly for those who were unable to make it. Check out the full report as either a "pdf" or "web version" both with live links to all the reports we cite.

Feel free to pass the report around – especially to those in the Millennial Generation who are only now coming to understand the importance they will play in American politics for a long time to come.