While President Obama overwhelmingly won the millennial vote in 2008 and 2012, new data from SurveyMonkey shows that Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, is struggling to follow his lead. Clinton has had trouble appealing to younger millennials (ages 18 to 24) throughout the 2016 election cycle, and things aren’t exactly looking up for her.
“Without good data, you might assume that Hillary Clinton is doing just as well [as Obama did] with this group. She is essentially running for a third Obama term, after all,” said Harry Enten for FiveThirtyEight. “But new SurveyMonkey data (shared with FiveThirtyEight) suggests that Clinton is winning under-25 voters by half as much as Obama did. And, moreover, the data suggests that these voters should be solidly Democratic.”
In a poll of 1,200 voters under the age of 25, Clinton is currently leading Trump by only 13 percentage points, whereas Obama led Romney by 29 percentage points in 2012. She’s winning just 41 percent of younger millennials to Trump’s 27 percent, followed by Libertarian Gary Johnson at 17 percent and the Green Party’s Jill Stein at 10 percent.
Younger millennials are the most likely to have a high approval rating of President Obama, but their support for the current president doesn’t translate to support for Clinton. So, while most older millennials (ages 25 to 35) who like Obama said they’ll vote for Clinton, and older generations who dislike Obama are more likely to vote for Trump, this trend doesn’t hold true for the under-25 group. Instead, many are either backing a third-party candidate or are undecided.
Given the choice, young millennials, who are typically Democrats, are leaning towards either Gary Johnson or Jill Stein. However, when the third-party candidates are not included as options, they tend to choose Clinton over Trump. In a two-way race, Clinton’s lead over Trump expands from 13 percentage points to 23.
If neither third-party candidate manages to qualify for the presidential debates, the two-way race between Trump and Clinton will most likely tighten. This may convince many younger voters to vote for a major party candidate rather than casting a protest vote for Johnson or Stein. As of yet, Johnson at least doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, polling on average between 10-12 percent — just shy of the national debate threshold.
“The bad news for Clinton is that we’re less than two months from Election Day, and there’s no sign that the third-party candidates’ share of the vote is fading,” continued Enten. “If Clinton is trying to reassemble Obama’s winning coalition, the youngest voters are proving to be her weakest spot.”
