Generational imprinting: how political events shape cohorts

Contemporary narratives of generational politics propose that formative experiences produce shared political opinions across an age cohort. In this article, I advance a theory of cohortization to challenge that view, arguing that large–scale political events produce differentiation within cohorts as much as differentiation between them. I investigate the implications of this framework through the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, analyzing attitudes toward law enforcement among non-Hispanic White Americans from 2016 to 2024. Using survey data from Cooperative Congressional Election Study, American National Election Study, and the Nationscape, I show that younger and older cohorts diverged after the event, but this differentiation was driven exclusively by young Democrats and Independents. The end result was not a unified generation, but one internally divided along party lines. This finding qualifies theories of generational politics, emphasizing that formative experiences may intensify existing political divisions within cohorts.