If there is one issue that is most important to win over the millennial demographic in 2016, it’s education.
A new GenForward poll found that the largest share of 18- to 30-year-olds surveyed (31%) listed education as the most important issue when choosing which political candidate to support.
Although education was the top issue overall, health care and gun control were also ranked as major issues by young adults, and responses differed significantly when millennials were broken down into different racial categories.
The GenForward research, conducted by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press NORC Center for Public Affairs, highlighted how race and ethnicity shape the opinions of Generation Y.
Among young African-Americans, the top concern was racism, and 21 percent of young blacks said police brutality was an important issue that would determine their vote.
Hispanic-Americans felt most strongly about immigration, and for many whites, the top concern was terrorism.
Matthew Luttig, a postdoctoral scholar working on the GenForward survey, said “it is fair to say that education is one of the top issues among 18- to 30-year-olds in terms of which candidate they choose in the 2016 election. But it is not clear that education is the single top issue. For example, the issue of racism is equally important as the issue of education among African Americans. Immigration is equally important to Latino/as. Economic growth is as important as education to Asian Americans. And terrorism and homeland security is equally ranked as important by whites.”
While the top concerns differed among these racial groups, education was the one issue that was consistently ranked as highly important across all groups. It was ranked as the second most important issue by all racial groups who didn’t choose it as number one.
GenForward also measured opinions of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump, and though young voters polled were unenthusiastic about Clinton and preferred Sanders as the Democratic nominee, most were strongly opposed to a president Trump.
79 percent said he is unqualified to be president; 80 percent believe he is not honest or trustworthy; 68 percent think he is racist. The greatest amount of support Trump does have comes from young whites.
Although it may not help his favorability scores in other areas, perhaps Trump’s best hope at capturing some of these young voters would be addressing their highest concerns.
