Is the Republican Party in danger of dying out?

A new Pew Research survey finds a demographic trend in the United States that threatens to push the Republican Party into permanent minority status unless it changes quickly.

The survey found that millennials — the generation of adults between the ages of 18 and 33 — vote heavily Democratic and have "liberal views on many political and social issues, ranging from a belief in an activist government to support for same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization."

They are also the most racially diverse generation in American history and it’s a key factor in explaining their political liberalism.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

But, as Pew notes, it is not the only factor: "Across a range of political and ideological measures, white millennials, while less liberal than the non-whites of their generation, are more liberal than the whites in older generations."

They are also the only generation in which self-described conservatives do not outnumber self-described liberals.

Meanwhile, the most loyal Republicans are growing older. As time marches on, their numbers are dwindling.

But Republicans do have an opening: Millennials may be more liberal, but they don't have much loyalty to the Democratic Party.

In fact, 50 percent of all millennials now describe themselves as political independents — the highest level of political disaffiliation recorded for any generation in the last quarter-century. They don’t like either of the two major political parties.

Nonetheless, this generation mostly votes Democratic and has little in common with the Republican Party. Needless to say, it's a real problem for the GOP.