Past research has shown that the perceived successes or failures of presidents have a durable influence on the partisan leanings and political attitudes of people who come of political age during their administrations. Here, I examine data from 344 Gallup surveys with a total of 399,755 respondents interviewed during the Obama presidency to (1) document the extent to which generational imprinting is visible among citizens and demographic subgroups in their party identification and ideology, (2) determine how the political identities and ideologies of people who have come of age during Obama’s presidency have evolved compared with those of earlier presidential generations, (3) explore the implications of the population’s changing demographic makeup and the political attitudes expressed by younger age cohorts for the future partisan balance of the American electorate, and (4) consider how the competition to succeed Obama is likely to affect partisan identities forged during his administration.
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