Six reasons Ron Paul appeals to young voters

Since starting this blog nine days ago, I’ve twice noted the popularity that Ron Paul enjoys among young voters.  I haven’t yet offered an explanation for his success, but others have.  To my knowledge, the most recent of these explanations comes from Alex Pearlman writing at Policymic and The Next Great Generation.

Pearlman’s article doesn’t come to any strong conclusion — Pearlman offers her own three scattered reasons (Paul’s different; he’s the “least evil”; and he speaks to youth issues) in addition to four distinct suggestions from outsiders.  It’s a good effort at a hard task.  To get at the real reasons, you’d first have to round up a random group of young Paul supporters, then you’d have to sit them down long enough for focus groups and surveys (I imagine Paul supporters as overly-excitable and opposed to labels, so it would be hard to do this).  Then you’d have to deal with the differences between what young Paul supporters say draws them to Paul versus what actually did attract them.

Nonetheless, Pearlman’s article got me thinking about the subject, and I figured I’d have a crack at six reasons why Paul appeals to many young voters:

Paul is a rebel.  According to some social science literature, young people are more apt to be rebels who enjoy swimming against the stream of society (crime, for instance, is more commonly committed by young people).  Ron Paul is perfect for these young contrarians — he bucks the establishment by suggesting ideas such as “The FED should be eliminated” or “The War on Drugs should be ended” that are outside or opposite the political mainstream.  In this sense, Ron Paul is the tattoo or nose piercing for the nerdy political junkies that never seriously rebelled.

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