Millennials have ballooned to be the largest group in America, but they don’t wield political clout because few of them vote.
Voting participation has been tamped because “millennials have witnessed only bickering and stalemate” as they’ve grown up and paid attention to politics, according to Voice of America.
The struggle to find gainful employment hasn’t helped things, either. A pessimistic, unemployed millennial isn’t as engaged in the political system. Nor do politicians cater to populations that don’t vote. That includes millennials, as well as the poor. If politicians don’t see returns (votes) on their investments (campaigning and other actions while in power), they don’t respond to the concerns of low-voter groups.
Millennials aren’t the only ones who don’t vote, of course. The 2014 midterm elections had the lowest voter turnout in 72 years, a 36.4 percent turnout. In 2012, about 45 percent of registered voters ages 18-29 voted, but that’s lower than older age cohorts.
An overwhelming 85 percent of millennials feel ignored in the 2016 election, but that’s an outgrowth of low voting numbers. Republicans won’t focus on millennial issues until they see a surge in votes from doing so.
Millennials haven’t delivered a surge in votes, though, because they don’t trust government institutions, nor politicians, Voice of America noted.
A lack of trust leads to apathy.
If millennials don’t see politicians and the federal government as a trustworthy method of change, or social improvement, it’s no wonder that Republican-leaning millennials choose outsiders such as Donald Trump and Ben Carson, who receive 22 percent and 20 percent support respectively, according to the Harvard Institute of Politics.
For Democratic-leaning millennials, Bernie Sanders has a slight lead over Hillary Clinton, 41 percent to 35 percent. Though not as lop-sided as Republicans, the Sanders campaign has positioned the Vermont senator as an outsider, with populist proposals to rescue the middle class and fight billionaires and Wall Street.
For millennials to care about voting, they’ve flocked to outsiders and politicians who campaign against the political mainstream.
Nor is the 2016 election the first time this has happened. The Ron Paul campaigns of 2008 and 2012 garnered high levels of youth support, in part by his endorsement of “views that are outside the mainstream.” In the 2012 Iowa caucus, 48 percent of caucus-goers under 30 supported Paul. In New Hampshire, he won 47 percent of the youth vote.
Youth voters flock toward the outsiders, the principled, and the unpredictable. That rarely turns a candidate into a president, however. Millennials get credit for Obama winning the presidency in 2008 and 2012, but the youth don’t spearhead campaigns. They still don’t vote in large enough numbers to change an election unless it’s on the margin.
That might be enough to make youth outreach worthwhile, but as the issues that millennials care about continue to be ignored, their (non)-voting record prevents the youth from setting the electoral agenda.
