While the Virginia gubernatorial election last November was the first indication of a red wave back by concerned parents, there is new data to back up that claim.
It should leave Democrats quaking in their boots.
In a new NPR/Marist poll of 1,162 national registered voters, 60% of parents with children under 18 said they would vote for Republicans, in comparison to just 39% saying they would vote for Democrats.
New NPR/Marist poll is remarkable
Republicans lead Democrats on generic Congressional ballot among these groups:
🚨 Parents with children under 18: 60% choose GOP; 39% Democrats
🚨 Latino voters: 52% GOP; 39% Dems pic.twitter.com/9QxnZsZ54D
— Christy Lewis (@Cavalewis) April 29, 2022
Other groups allowed showed jaw-dropping Republican support in the survey, including 52% of Latinos.
As for parents in particular nobody should be surprised that they would gravitate toward conservative leadership right now.
It’s no secret that the coronavirus pandemic exposed both disparities in education along with the clear agenda-pushing in many classrooms. By going on Zoom, parents all of a sudden became part of the classroom, and what many of them saw was deeply concerning.
As someone who was a high schooler during the height of lockdowns, I was astonished at how many of my teachers would make extreme political statements without realizing that there could be a parent listening or even a student recording. That sort of shameless behavior by instructors came to a breaking point in many upper-middle-class communities, like in Loudon County, Va., when the Critical Race Theory debate, among other issues, took off.
The flood gates were open, and parents suddenly woke up and started getting involved by starting a dialogue with their schools and school boards. Even students began to step up, like when I and a few other seniors had a meeting with our principal about our politically slanted yearbook, which made Fox News on my graduation day, and sometimes a hostile environment on campus for conservatives. People may have been angry before, but now they’ve figured out how to make their voices heard.
Politics aside, many parents are not going to forgive liberal leadership for the mental health crisis among Generation Z that the lockdowns helped create. Adults, in general, were arguably better equipped to handle the unprecedented challenges, except children desperately needed social interaction and continued in-person education.
Parents want to be put back in the driver’s seat, and they are no longer interested in being at the mercy of local and state-level bureaucrats and teachers who are more interested in embedding their own worldview onto their pupils than preparing actual education.
There is already little room for doubt that Republicans will take back Congress in 2022, so Democrats should not underestimate the power of mama and papa bears.