In the midst of all the bad news being splattered in our faces every day as a consequence of the results of the 2016 election, a new poll by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics shows that 72 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds disapprove of Donald Trump. The poll also shows they prefer that Democrats win a majority in Congress in this fall’s midterms, and there is an increase in the percentage who say they plan to vote come November.
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The findings come from the institute’s 35th National Youth Poll. Specifically, 37 percent of all respondents under 30 said they will definitely be voting in the midterms, and another 16 percent say they probably will. That compares with 23 percent who said they would definitely vote in 2014, and 31 percent who said so in 2010.
And young Democrats? Fifty-one percent of them say they will definitely vote in November.
John Wagner reports:
Preference for Democratic control of Congress has grown between now and the time of the last IOP poll. In Fall 2017, there was a 32-point partisan gap among the most likely young voters, 65 percent preferring Democrats control Congress, with 33 percent favoring Republicans.
Today, the gap has increased to 41 points, 69 percent supporting Democrats and 28 percent Republicans. “Millennials and post-Millennials are on the verge of transforming the culture of politics today and setting the tone for the future,” said John Della Volpe, Polling Director at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. “This generation of young Americans is as engaged as we have ever seen them in a midterm election cycle.
Those results give progressives another reason for optimism about the upcoming election, which many observers—experts and professionals alike—have been characterizing as a potential blue wave or even a blue tsunami, sweeping Republicans out of office in some jurisdictions where Democrats haven’t run candidates in years.
But there are caveats. The institute’s findings need to be placed in historical light. Because if the nation’s under-30s vote actually matched the poll’s definitely-will-vote respondents, it would by far be the best youth turnout in a midterm election since 18-year-olds gained the right to vote more than 45 years ago.
The record for under-30 turnout in a midterm election was 31 percent in 1982, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University. That same year, turnout for voters over 30 was 61 percent.
What the record shows is that a fifth to a fourth of under-30 Americans have shown up to vote in the 11 midterm elections of the past four decades. And in the most recent past six midterms, since 1994, that turnout has fallen. In midterm elections since 1998, the youth vote has ranged between 22 percent and 25 percent, compared to an average of 29 percent in the 1970s and 1980s.
Since January 2017, the enthusiastic activism that has emerged around various issues indicates strong support for overturning Republican control of Congress and state legislatures, most of which are now in GOP hands. A good deal of that enthusiasm comes from young people. But one problem in 2014 was the fact young people were the least likely to be contacted about candidates of any voting demographic.
That’s an organizing failure that demands a fix if we’re to have any hope of bringing the percentage of youth who say they definitely will vote closer to the percentage who actually do.
Something that needs to be scrutinized closely in the process of raising the turnout is how the vote looks along lines of gender, ethnicity, and race. From CIRCLE, more graphs from 2014:
While 54% of youth (18-29) nationally voted for Democratic House candidates, significant differences consistently emerge by race and ethnicity. In both 2010 and 2014, Black and Latino youth were considerably more likely to choose Democratic House candidates than White youth were. In 2014, White youth gave a majority to the Republicans in House races (54% to 43%).
While White youth looked more conservative than people of color in 2014, White women approved of Congress and President Obama at a higher rate than White men. At the same time, White women were slightly more likely to see the Republican Party favorably than White men were (54% vs.49%), but largely split their vote between parties (50% for Republicans in House races, 47% for Democrats), while young white men overwhelmingly supported House Republican candidates (58% vs. 39%). Young White men were more likely to identify as Independents (40%) followed closely by GOP (36%), while young White women’s top choice was the GOP (41%), and 30% identified themselves as Independents.
We should focus energy, time, and money on reaching all youth regardless of their gender, ethnicity, or race. But that doesn’t mean that what works for young women will work equally well for young men, or that what works for Latina women will work for Native women.