For Some Boomers, Political Affiliation A Matter of Chance

For Some Boomers, Political Affiliation A Matter of Chance

By Donal on Tue, 06/28/2011 - 8:53pm |

Why does one person become a liberal and another a conservative? As we’ve written, many factors seem to come into play, including genetics, personality and even unnoticed cues from the physical environment.

A newly published study shows that, for at least one group of men, lifelong political affiliation was, to a significant degree, a matter of chance.

For young men coming of age in the Vietnam draft era, the likelihood they’d be sent to war — as determined by a national lottery — had both a short- and long-term impact on their party identification. Republican-leaning men with low lottery numbers —that is, those who faced a good chance of being drafted — were far more likely to abandon their party than those with high numbers.

URL:

http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/for-some-boomers-political-affiliation-a-matter-of-chance-32864/