Marijuana and Democratic Party Fortunes

Is Marijuana A Factor?

I was reading the NYRB this evening.  Michael Tomasky was reviewing the Democratic Party's resistance to the Trump administration.  He mentions a Pew poll that found non-voters (registered voters who didn't vote in '12, '14 and '16) are overwhelmingly Democratic or lean Democratic, 52 to only 27% Republican.  I checked out the Pew poll in question and thought I saw 58/37.  But, even so, the difference is large.

The poll found that non-voters were generally those who were the least engaged with society (they cared less about who won elections, for example).

Which got me thinking: this sounds a lot like steady marijuana users: involved in their own individualistic worlds.  So, I checked out the percentage of U.S. users over the past 50 years, and found that it began at about 5% in '70 and reached 10% by '73, then 25% by '77, and 35% by '85.  Of course these figures are for those who had at least 'tried' marijuana.  This likely means that the early years included very few who were steady users.  By '85, this would likely have been reversed, and a majority, probably, were consistent users.

If so, we have a fairly good match for the plunge into Republicanism, and Conservatism in general, that occurred between '70 and '90.  One could even say that the one Democratic president elected in that timeframe, Carter in '76, was the Democratic Party's answer to the decline of their natural constituency, as a significant 10% or so of the electorate became steady users, and drifted away into self-absorbption; and that answer was to appeal to the center of the political spectrum.  That political/geographic answer was seconded by Clinton in '92; and, perhaps, it's only been the natural increase in the Democratic Party's demographics since then (as the proportion of non-college-educated white voters has declined) that allowed Obama to win in '08 and '12, and Clinton to win the popular vote in '16.

Not an obvious case to make, but possibly under-appreciated, if true.  And the case for steady users emerging from their habit would be strengthened if a connection were confirmed.  For example, if Pew were to ask about attitudes regarding marijuana in their next poll of voters/non-voters, and whether participants used it recreationally, non-voters could then be compared to users.