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Poll finds most parents and kids agree on Trump, economy

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June 14th, 2018 by Ric Hanson

WASHINGTON (AP) — A majority of American young people and their parents who disapprove of the job President Trump is doing, according to a new pol. The survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV found that 57 percent of parents and 73 percent of young people ages 15 to 26 disapprove of the president’s performance. The common ground doesn’t end there. The generations also agree that politics have become dysfunctional, and both say they’re dissatisfied with the two-party system. On issues broadly, a 55 percent majority of young people and their parents say they usually see eye to eye, and 31 percent say they debate things diplomatically. Just 9 percent say they avoid talking politics, and only 5 percent say their debates turn into “World War III.”
And most say they agree with each other on a wide variety of individual issues, including feelings on the economy, health care, immigration, racism and abortion.

Still, hotheadedness abounds over politics, as anyone who has access to the internet knows. The survey showed that online, especially, politics seeps into interactions with extended family members. Twenty percent of young people and their parents say they have done the virtual equivalent of uninviting a family member — by blocking them or unfriending them — because of a disagreement over politics. An equal percentage of both generations say they have been blocked or unfriended. 22-year old Mackenzi Curtis, a mother of two in Cedar Rapids, said she stopped following one older family member, who’s in his 60s, on Facebook over his posts about the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Several students became gun control advocates after a gunman killed 17 people on Feb. 14.

She said “I was thinking they’re pretty much bullying a teenager that’s been through a traumatic experience. “I think it has a lot to do with the difference in generations.” Eleven percent of respondents say they have had a holiday gathering ruined over politics, while about an equal percentage say they’ve decided not to attend a family event for the same reason. Seventeen percent say political disagreements inspired a relative to skip a family event. The two generations are equally likely to engage on social media on the Nov. 6 elections, the study found. A quarter of parents and young people say they’ll post or comment on the midterms, and similar percentages say they share memes about the races. That’s a key data point for the campaigns trying to rev up and drive voters to the polls.

By any measure, Trump revolutionized Twitter as a political instrument before his 2016 upset over Democrat Hillary Clinton and during his presidency. Ahead of the 2018 midterms, both parties are leveraging the power of social media, engagement and relationships as Republicans defend their congressional majorities and Democrats try to topple them. Among parents and young people who say they aren’t of the same mind, young people say they tend to disagree with their parents most about racism, while their parents say the largest area of disagreement is gun control. Both generations tend to point to Trump and LGBT rights as sources of contention. The generations say it can be hard to sway the other generation when differences exist, but not necessarily impossible.

Few young people and parents — only 11 percent overall — say they are always able to persuade each other to change his or her views, but another 53 percent say they can sometimes do it. Just 6 percent say they can always be persuaded, but 44 percent say they sometimes can be.