President Obama was elected on a wave of youth: his campaign was tech savvy, on point and the epitome of political cool. Six years later, his party worries that disenchanted millennial voters will fail to support Democratic candidates at the polls next month, potentially causing them to lose control of the Senate.
“[The] hope and change millennials invested in has hit a brick wall,” Jim Manley, Democratic strategist and former spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told The Hill. He continued, saying that the group had become “very cynical about the political process and less likely to vote than they had in the past.”
Despite the administration’s soaring promises, sluggish economic growth has mired a generation of 18- to 34-year-olds in unemployment, underemployment and general economic malaise. In 2008, Obama was successful at inspiring young voters to have faith in formerly distrusted political institutions and an economy which had stalled. But the rhetoric that seemed fresh and inspiring then today rings flat and out of touch.
A poll released earlier this year by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics showed a growing disenchantment with Democrats. The survey found that “a mere 23 percent of Democratic-leaning millennials said they would vote in the midterm election,” down from 31 percent who said that they would vote in the 2010 midterms. On the other side of the aisle, 32 percent of conservative-leaning millennials said that they were going to vote in the election.
Another study by Rare saw similar results and found that the youth vote seemed to be up for grabs this election cycle.
“We’ve seen a growing disenchantment with Democrats generally,” John Della Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard’s IOP, said in an interview with The Hill. However, he cautioned that disenchantment with Democrats did not necessarily equate support for Republicans. It could just result in lower participation by young voters.
Hoping to capitalize on this opening and to make up for shortcomings in the 2012 campaign, the Republican National Committee has hired a national youth director to target appeals to college students and recent graduates.
In the words of one RNC official, while the party had failed to effectively communicate with the younger generation in the past, “now we are engaging with them in ways we’ve never done before.”
However, Democrats remain confident that their message with continue to resonate with the youth. As one DNC official told the Hill, millennials understand that “Democrats have their backs.”
