millennial generation has become as large a potential bloc of voters as the baby boomers.
Reuters/Ipsos
polling shows that Americans aged 18 to 34 are slightly less likely to vote for
president this year than their comparably aged peers were in 2012. Some
political scientists worry that this election could scar a generation of
voters, making them less likely to cast ballots in the future.
Young
Americans on the left and right have found reasons to be dissatisfied with
their choices this year. Senator Bernie Sanders had an enthusiastic following
of younger people before he lost the Democratic primary race to former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On the Republican side, some are unwilling
to vote for Donald Trump, citing the New York businessman's sometimes insulting
rhetoric on women, minorities and immigrants.
Brandon
Epstein, who turned 18 on Monday, had looked forward earlier in the year to
casting his first vote for Sanders. Now, the resident of suburban Suffolk
County, New York, plans to sit out the vote on Election Day, Nov. 8.
"It's
because of the selection of the candidates. I find them to be not just sub-par,
but unusually sub-par," said Epstein, a student at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Something's gone
terribly wrong."
That sentiment
is broadly reflected in poll data that show that young Americans are less
enthusiastic about their choices in November than they were four years ago when
Democratic President Barack Obama faced a re-election challenge from Republican
Mitt Romney.
Some 52.2
percent of respondents aged 18 to 34 told Reuters/Ipsos they were certain or
almost certain to vote, compared with 56.1 percent who reported that level of
certainty at the same point in 2012.
The national
tracking poll was conducted online in English in all 50 states. It included
3,088 people between 18-34 years old who took the survey from Oct. 1 to Oct.
17, and 2,141 18-34 year olds who took the poll on the same days in 2012. It
has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 2 percentage points for
both groups.
'DEEP
CYNICISM'
For at least
the past half century, young Americans have voted at lower rates than their
elders. But this year's decline in enthusiasm is of particular concern because
it comes as the millennial generation - people born from 1981 through 1997 -
has become as large a bloc of eligible voters as the baby boomers - born between
1946 and 1964. Each group's number of eligible voters is approaching 70 million
people, according to the Pew Research Center.
"This
generation has never trusted the government, Wall Street or the media
less," John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard University's
Institute of Politics, said of the millennials. "That's likely to result
in turnout of less than 50 percent and of those who do turn out, there is still
a deep cynicism regarding the impact of their vote, whether or not it will make
a difference."
The projected
low turnout is a particular concern given recent research showing how important
habit is in encouraging voter participation. Put simply, a person who votes in
one election is about 10 percent more likely to vote in the next than an
eligible voter who opted to stay home, said Alexander Coppock, an assistant
professor of political science at Yale University.
"If you
extend that logic, if you have an election that fails to turn people on to
voting, you'd expect that you wouldn't get that cumulative effect," said
Coppock, whose article "Is Voting Habit Forming?" was published in
this month's issue of the American Journal for Political Science.
However, not
all young voters unhappy with their choices will be staying home. Some plan to
cast a ballot anyway, even if only in protest, rather than sitting out.
That group
includes Cameron Khansarinia, a 20-year-old vice president of the Harvard
Republican Club, who said he would cast a ballot even though he opposed Trump.
"I will
definitely vote, I just don't know if I will be writing someone in or voting
for (Libertarian) Gary Johnson or even voting for Hillary Clinton when it gets
down to it," said Khansarinia, who is registered to vote in heavily
Democratic California. "Once this is over, come Nov. 9, we will need
people here to rebuild the party."
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