Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., was unable to say Wednesday afternoon why the Clinton campaign is struggling to win over millennial voters, but she said she knew for sure they don’t like GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Klobuchar, a Clinton supporter, was asked in an interview about the fact that third party candidates, including Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, have had more success exciting younger voters.
“The millennials are a group, when you look at the numbers, and I have one at home so I know this, they kind of care about each other in a way that’s unique,” the senator told MSNBC.
“They know that they are a larger chunk of immigrants and minorities. So when [Trump] lashes out at minorities and immigrants, he’s lashing out at all millennials. When he wants to reverse, put on judges that would want to change Roe v. Wade, or when he wants to focus on or be against gay marriage, those kinds of things, they look out for themselves as a group.”
“And they know they are something different,” she said. “I think that cannot be forgotten as one of the subtle differences when we go into November that I think is going to make a big difference.”
The Clinton campaign has made it no secret it views millennials as the key to victory in the fall, and it has gone hard after this voting bloc with everything from targeted op-eds to rallies on college campuses.
The Democratic nominee’s team has increased its footprint at major universities, and it has also hosted several Facebook live chats.
The candidate herself held a call with students earlier this month at Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina. Clinton’s team even released a “college calculator” for potential students to determine the cost of higher education.
Her campaign has doubled its efforts after recent polling showed she has been hemorrhaging millennial support to third-party candidates.
Clinton surrogates, including President Obama, former President Bill Clinton, first lady Michelle Obama, Chelsea Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and one-time primary opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have all hit the campaign trail with messages aimed directly at courting millennials.
The Clinton campaign has also dispatched hundreds of “campus organizers” as part of an effort to make good on its promise to register approximately 3 million new voters for the 2016 election.
