Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives this year due to a big jump in liberal Millennials moving to the suburbs to buy houses, start families, and begin the transition into conservatives.

The latest Ernst & Young LLP, Research regarding the changing preferences for the Millennial age group of 18 to 34 for the period from June 2016 to June 2018, found the percentage of older Millennials between the ages of 28 to 31 that owned a home spiked from 27 to 47 percent, and the percentage of younger Millennials between the ages of 20 and 23 that lived with their parents plunged from 63 to 36 percent.

Despite Millennials increasingly holding full-time jobs and the percentage feeling positive about the economy spiking from 28 percent in 2016 to 41 percent in 2018, only one-third believe their standard of living will be better than their parents in the long term.

A major reason for Millennial angst about the future is that 50 percent are paying off or plan to take out student loans. About 80 percent say student debt has forced them to delay home ownership. This burden may explain why Millennials’ median age for a first marriage has jumped by seven years since 1960 to 27.4 for women and 29.5 for men. As of result, only 38 percent of Millennials versus 50 percent of U.S. adults are now married.

Over the 40 percent of the 425 House of Representatives seats were predominantly in suburban districts in 2018, according to a CityLab Density Analysis. Of the 74 Republican suburban seats, Democrats claim liberal “Blue Wave” realignment caused Republicans to lose 38 suburban seats, according to the New York Times.

Democrats will net at least 39 House seats in 2018 and are likely to add another one or two seats that are “too close call.” For the 20 House seats Fox News designated as “Hot Races,” Democrats won 16 and lead in one; while Republicans only won three.

The Democrats strength has always been in the cities, but most of the House seats they flipped were by small vote margins and tended to be urban edge suburbs in the Midwest, near Washington D.C., and Orange County, CA, according to the NY Times. 

Ernst & Young found that a 38 percent majority of Millennials now live in the suburbs, while another 37 percent live in cities. In the 10 years from 2007 to 2017, Millennials’ median income rose by 17 percent, but median housing costs for cities and suburbs rose by 29 percent. Ernst & Young expects a big relocation of Millennials to small towns and rural communities where housing costs rose by 16 percent over the same period, slightly less than Millennials’ income growth.

By delaying their launch into the adult responsibilities of marriage, mortgages, babies, and paying taxes by about seven years, the percentage of Millennials voting Democrat rose since 2010 from about 53 percent to 59 percent; while those voting Republican fell from 38 to 32 percent, according to Pew Research.

But despite dominating the Millennial vote, “Democrat” registration of Millennials actually fell from 37 to 35 percent since 2010; while Millennials registering “Independent” spiked from about 35 percent to 44 percent.

Ernst & Young reported that Millennials are “deeply distrustful of traditional American institutions, preferring to rely on themselves and a good education. They believe the US tax system is unfair and are inclined to believe that the full implementation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act won’t change that.”

Millennials will surpass their ‘Baby Boomer’ parents in 2019 as the largest adult generation and will subsequently become the largest U.S. voter demographic.

Boomers born between 1946 and 1964 were the hippie “drugs, sex and rock-and-roll” liberal Democrats of the late 1960s and early 1970s. But after launching into the adulthood of marriage, mortgages, babies and paying taxes, Boomers evolved into the conservative voter demographic that elected Republicans as four of the next six presidents.

Millennials voted as liberals in 2018 because they got off to about a seven-year delay on the road to adulthood. But with Millennials playing catch-up on marriage, mortgages, babies and paying taxes, don’t be surprised if Millennials start voting for their own economic interests and morph into another dominant conservative voter demographic over the next four decades.