Remember that poll from last week that found that young adults weren’t big fans of capitalism? Well, I just stumbled across the full report, and it has some interesting stuff to say about the upcoming presidential election.
The big story out of the poll is that Clinton is currently beating Trump among likely voters aged 18–29 by a margin of 61% to 25%. Romney got 37% of the youth vote in 2012, and McCain got 32% in 2008. Even accounting for undecideds, these numbers would put Trump under 30%.
Perhaps even more interesting, though, is the poll’s partisan voter data. There’s a lot of worry right now about what Sanders voters will do in November, and though that worry is mostly expressed in terms of young “Bernie Bro” types, there hasn’t been a huge amount of polling on the issue that breaks down the electorate by age.
So how’s Clinton doing with young Democrats? Pretty well. The poll has her beating Trump 83–5 with that group, which is almost on par with exit polls from 2012 and 2008.
Trump, on the other hand, beats Clinton by only 57–13 with young Republicans, who went for Romney 91–7 and McCain 84–15. That 30% undecided Republican figure is particularly ugly — Clinton’s undecideds among young Democrats are only 12%.
And on top of that, she’s winning young independents by better than two to one.
Looking at race, we find Clinton doing about as well as Obama with young black voters, and a bit better than Obama with young whites, though a lot of white voters remain undecided. Where the difference between the two candidates really shows up in the racial/ethnic breakdown is with young Latinos, who supported Obama 74–23 in 2012. In this poll, Clinton is up 71–9, which translates to Trump losing half of Romney’s young Latino vote even after you account for undecideds.
Oh, and Trump is losing young women to Clinton 57-15. McCain got 29% of young women, and Romney got 32%.
Short version? Young Sanders supporters aren’t a problem for Hillary right now, but young Republicans are a disaster for Trump. Young whites like Clinton fine, and young Latinos are flocking to her.
Young voters went for Obama in historic numbers in 2008, and a bit less decisively in 2012. Right now, Clinton’s polling with the youth vote looks more like Obama 2008 than Obama 2012, and if anything it’s a little better than the 2008 results. Given Clinton’s performance in the primaries, I think it’s safe to say that these numbers are less a reflection on her than on her opponent.
When it comes to the youth vote, Trump is the anti-Obama.
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