A Reuters/Ipsos poll of millennial voters released Monday caught some traction in the press for finding a shift away from the Democratic Party among 18-to-34-year-olds. But there’s an important caveat.
Reuters reports: “The online survey of more than 16,000 registered voters ages 18 to 34 shows their support for Democrats over Republicans for Congress slipped by about 9 percentage points over the past two years, to 46 percent overall.” (Emphasis added.)
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Yes, that movement is bad news for Democrats, but 46 percent is still a big number, and it represents an 18 point lead.
Reuters also noted in its write-up of the survey that “only 28 percent of those polled expressed overt support for Republicans in the 2018 poll — about the same percentage as two years earlier,” and “nearly two of three young voters polled said they do not like Republican President Donald Trump.”
So while millennial voters appear to be moving away from the Democratic Party, it’s possible that Trump is preventing them from finding a home in the GOP.
That doesn’t appear to be the case with every demographic group. “Two years ago, young white people favored Democrats over Republicans for Congress by a margin of 47 to 33 percent; that gap vanished by this year, with 39 percent supporting each party,” according to Reuters. Among young white men in particular, the poll found “they favor Republicans over Democrats by a margin of 46 to 37 percent,” after preferring Democrats in 2016.
The poll had more good news for Republicans when it comes to the economy, having narrowed the confidence gap favoring Democrats from 12 points to two.
“Millennials are almost evenly split this year over the question of which party has a better plan for the economy,” according to Reuters, “with 34 percent picking the Democrats and 32 percent choosing Republicans. That’s a shift from two years ago, when they said Democrats had the better plan by a 12-point margin.”
The poll was conducted in the first three months of 2016 and 2018, and surveyed 16,000 registered voters between the ages of 18 and 24. Its credibility interval was one percentage point.
That millennials seem to have shifted away from Democrats (but not towards Republicans) between March of 2016 and March of 2018 could in part reflect frustration over the party’s treatment of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the primary competition that played out in the summer of 2016 and has continued to make headlines. As the Washington Post reported, “Sanders won more votes among those under age 30 than the two presumptive major-party presidential nominees combined.” In July of 2016, a Gallup poll found only 31 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds had a favorable view of Hillary Clinton.
In a climate where the party typically most popular with young people is struggling, and the other party is under the direction of a president the generation appears to dislike, these trends seem to make sense.
