Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton currently lead the polls in Virginia ahead of tomorrow’s primaries, but Virginia is still considered a highly competitive toss-up state.
Virginia’s competitiveness rating, along with the fact that almost a quarter of the state’s eligible voters are under 30-years-old, could be a good sign for Bernie Sanders, Marco Rubio, and even Ted Cruz, all of whom have been consistently drawing in bigger portions of the youth vote than either of the party front-runners so far.
Virginia has been ranked #7 of the top 10 states with the highest youth electoral significance by The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE). The state was given a 2.98 YESI (Youth Electoral Significance Index) score, indicating that it’s highly likely that young voters will heavily influence tomorrow’s primaries.
Others that made the top 10 include competitive states Colorado, Florida, and Ohio.
“Virginia has 1.2 million young citizens, making up 21.3% of the population, many of whom now have the opportunity to register to vote online,” according to CIRCLE’s website.
But the question remains: will millennials show up to vote on Super Tuesday? In Virginia, all signs point to yes.
CIRCLE ranks Virginia in the 47th percentile for turnout probability, noting that the average young voter turnout in the past three presidential elections has been at 51%, and that young voters turned out at a higher rate in Virginia than the national youth average in both 2008 and 2012.
In addition to having a large youth population and a high youth turnout probability, Virginia voters are some of the most highly educated primary voters, which could influence the election’s outcome. University of Virginia Center for Politics Director
“Whoever is running on March 1 will face one of the more educated primary electorates,” said University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato. “Of states with exit polling data in 2012, no state had a higher percentage of primary voters who were college graduates, 58%,” he wrote on his Crystal Ball website.
The impact?
“Based on many surveys and the first two exit polls of 2016, it’s clear that as the more education a voter has, the less likely he or she is to vote for Trump: In Iowa, Trump did seven points worse among college grads; in New Hampshire, he did 12 points worse,” Sabato suggested.
With Rubio generally performing better among college graduates, Virginia regions inhabited by large numbers of both college grads and young voters could give him some serious gains in the state’s GOP primary.
