Much ado has been made in the last week about a Harvard poll that reportedly shows the GOP on the verge of undoing President Barack Obama’s spell on college-aged youth.
According to Harvard Institute of Politics’ Fall 2013 study, support for the Democratic Party has steadily been dropping among 18-24 year olds since 2009, with a five-percentage point drop in the last seven months alone. Only 31 percent of college-aged young people now identify as Democrats, and 25 percent now identify as Republicans. College students’ approval of the job Obama’s doing is also down significantly from 51 percent earlier this year to 39 percent. Across the entire 18-29 age spectrum, 37 percent of respondents identified as conservative versus the 33 percent who self-identified as liberal.
Coupled with Ken Cuccinelli’s strong showing in the Virginia gubernatorial race last month with 18-24 year olds and Chris Christie’s dramatic 13 point increase in support from 18-29 year olds in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, the Harvard study has Republicans feeling pretty good about their odds with young people right now, as they should be. The right’s renewed focus on winning young people is getting positive nods.
But Republicans shouldn’t read too much into the recent Harvard poll and the GOP’s electoral victories among youth in last month’s statewide elections. The Republican Party still has a long long way to go with twentysomethings.
Though less college students now identify as Democrats, the percentage of college students who say they are Republicans remains roughly unchanged, increasing by a mere percentage point. The percentage of 18-29 year olds overall who self-identify as either Republican or Democrat was also roughly unmoved. In April, 39 percent of young Americans called themselves Democrats. Now, 38 percent consider themselves Democrats. Then, 23 percent of young Americans claimed to be Republicans. Now, 22 percent say they’re Republicans.
Nothing in Harvard’s research suggested that this disappointment with Obama is causing college students to move toward the Republican Party en masse. Given the theoretical option to recast their vote in the 2012 presidential election, only four percent of young people who voted for Obama said they’d switch their vote to 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Even more telling: eight percent of young Obama voters who said they wished they hadn’t voted for Obama wouldn’t have wanted to vote for Romney, either. Instead, they wish they’d voted for “someone else” entirely.
The Obama administration has clearly dropped the ball with young people, but the GOP hasn’t quite figured out how to pick it up and run with it. Even in Virginia, where Cuccinelli won the 18-24 year old vote thanks to some very zealous young libertarian volunteers and a concerted effort by the College Republicans, the GOP candidate failed to win the 18-29 year old demographic as a whole. Democratic Governor-elect Terry McAullife took 45 percent of the youth vote and Cuccinelli took 40 percent.
In New Jersey, Christie crushed his Democratic opponent in every category but one: 18-29 year olds. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Barbara Buono – whose candidacy was never a real threat to Christie – still won the youth vote, 51 percent to Christie’s 49 percent.
The GOP’s performance with young people clearly continues to be one of its weak points.
Thankfully, the Republican National Committee seems to be taking this problem more seriously than it has in the past, and the National Republican Congressional Committee has vastly expanded its digital department and traded in dry press releases for BuzzFeed style listicles and humorous tumblrs. Meanwhile, conservative non-profit Generation Opportunity is upping its game on college campuses by holding tailgates to encourage young people to “Opt-Out” of Obamacare.
The efforts of these groups and other groups working to spread free-market principles to young people aren’t going unnoticed, but the numbers don’t lie. The GOP has clearly not yet come up with a formula to make the magic happen with young people.
