The GOP has been struggling to deal with social issues and the ballot for some time now. In the conservative echo chamber that is a fact that is daily denied, and the proof offered is the continual support of vocal social conservatives. They are a very vocal minority, and that is not helping the situation. It’s further complicated by the fact that in hindsight, it has been generally assumed that the only reason Barack Obama ended up with a second term was because conservative Republicans decided to stay home on election day, instead of voting for Mitt Romney. Or maybe that isn’t a complicating factor.

For some time now, political pundits and strategists have been going back and forth over precisely where liberty-minded millennial voters will land in upcoming elections. It is hoped that they will decide to follow Tea Party leaders like Rand Paul and Justin Amash, at least since these people are aligned with the GOP, if in name only. That would probably be the case if economic, foreign policy, and deficit spending were the only issues these voters cared about. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case.

The fact is that while younger voters might agree with many conservative principles when it comes to fiscal and foreign policy issues, they can’t get past the social issues to choose conservatives where it counts — at the ballot box. This is something that Larry Sabato’s Center for Politics has already explored in depth. Boil it down to basics, and the bottom line is that there isn’t a majority of young voters that are for pushing social conservative issues. On the contrary, they’re largely opposed to the conservative stand.