In affecting the United States’ ability to respond to events abroad, polarization may prevent swift action, which is crucial in developing a strategy to handle the militant group ISIS. However, results from the Harvard Public Opinion Project’s fall poll indicates that while young Americans are far from a consensus on how to deal with ISIS, their opinions are not split along party lines.
HPOP found that, among youth respondents, Republicans support Obama’s plan more than broadly defined conservatives do, and that Democrats support Obama’s plan less than broadly defined liberals do. Among these groups, self-identified Republicans were 8 points more likely to support further airstrikes than Democrats, and 18 points more likely to support them than independents.
At first glance, these results echo the conventional wisdom that Republicans are more hawkish than Democrats. However, when respondents were classified based on their political ideology on a liberal-moderate-conservative scale, the rates of support roughly equalize: 43 percent of liberals and 41 percent of conservatives support further airstrikes. Even if Republicans are the political group most likely to support an expanded air campaign, the broader group of conservatives is less certain. Sticking with the conventional wisdom misses the fact that somewhere in the transition from party name to underlying beliefs, conservatives become noticeably less supportive of an expanded air campaign, while liberals remain unaffected.
The key to understanding this shift is examining the composition of young American conservatives. Young liberals are a fairly predictable group: 57 percent of them are Democrats, 38 percent are independent, and only 4 percent are Republican. Though independent liberals are more likely to oppose or be unsure about expanded airstrikes, their beliefs don’t carry as much weight as the larger number of Democratic liberals, who outnumber others.
Young conservatives, on the other hand, are far more diverse: 45 percent are Republican, 40 percent are independent, and 14 percent are Democrats. Republican conservatives don’t form a strong majority in the group, giving more weight to the beliefs of other conservatives. A full 19 points more unsure about their support for expanded airstrikes, these other conservatives hold starkly different views than their Republicans peers. When these three groups are combined, their divergent beliefs average out to a conservative mindset closer to the middle–one that resembles the young liberals’ beliefs.
In the context of combating ISIS, the similar distributions of millennials’ beliefs across ideologies seem to offer the promise of debate over America’s response to ISIS without the usual challenge of partisan gridlock. However, a separate Washington Post-ABC poll of the American public suggests that this equilibrium is fragile at best: the poll found that 72 percent of conservative Americans support further airstrikes, while only 54 percent of liberals do. Politicians should act swiftly in responding to ISIS: not only because of the threat posed by the group, but also because now may be their best chance.
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