Nearly a quarter of Americans ages 18 to 35 would rather see a giant meteor strike the Earth than see either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the White House, according to the new UMass Lowell/Odyssey millennial poll released today.
Yes, you read that right. The poll asked millennials to choose their preference between Clinton, Trump, a random lottery to choose the president from all U.S. citizens, Barack Obama appointing himself to a life term as president, or a giant meteor striking Earth and extinguishing all human life.
And…. you guessed it: 23 percent of millennials supported the idea of a giant meteor strike happening before the Nov. 8 election. Over a Clinton or Trump presidency, 39 percent of those surveyed said they preferred Obama serve a life term, and 26 percent preferred a random lottery to choose the next president.
The national poll, conducted last week, was designed to get a closer look into millennials minds and find out about their attitude, opinions, and perception toward the 2016 election, serious or not.
Approximately 23 million millennials voted in 2012 — meaning more than 5 million voters would chose death, according to this poll.
Prof. Joshua Dyck, co-director of UMass Lowell’s Center for Public Opinion, who wrote and analyzed the independent, nonpartisan poll said, “We do not take our respondents at their word that they are earnestly interested in seeing the world end, but we do take their willingness to rank two constitutional crises and a giant meteor ahead of these two candidates with startling frequency as a sign of displeasure and disaffection with the candidates and the 2016 election.”
Key findings about the presidential election:
– Millennials aren’t happy about their choices for president and may not vote.
– It appears that the majority of likely voters among Sanders’ supporters are voting for Clinton.
– Millennials view Trump negatively by every metric in this survey.
– Clinton’s approval rating is 56% among registered voters, compared with Sanders (73%) and Obama (71%).
As has been reported widely in other surveys, one of Trump’s critical problems is that he is experiencing a great deal of attrition from Republicans. Only 68 percent of Republican millennials express an intent to vote for Trump; 16 percent said they will vote for Clinton, 9 percent support Gary Johnson, and 1 percent support Jill Stein. Clinton’s partisan loyalty is 10 points higher, with 78 percent of Democratic millennials saying they will vote for their party’s nominee.
An even bigger problem for Trump lies in millennial party identification. Among registered voters, 61 percent of millennials are Democrats (includes independents who lean Democratic) and 23 percent are Republicans (including leaners), with the remaining 15 percent identifying as purely independent or something else. This gap in party identification among young people, which appears to have started in 2008, seems to persist. Broken down by age, 58 percent of millennials ages 18-24 identify as Democrats, as do 61 percent of those ages 25-29, and 64 percent of those ages 30-35. To the extent that party identification is something acquired at a young age that persists throughout the life cycle, the GOP has a serious electoral problem with millennials.
