Enthusiasm gap among youth spells trouble for Clinton
By Chris Sheridan Gaby Irizarry, 19, is voting for the first time in a US presidential election in November. Like many university students, she's backing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. But some of her friends are not.
"A lot of people are choosing not to vote," says the George Washington University student from Texas. "Looking at the two options, they think if I can't choose from either I might as well not choose anyone at all." Those two options are Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump, whose support among young voters is low.
There's little doubt the majority of young people will back Clinton. But new poll numbers show the level of enthusiasm is not as high as the campaign may have hoped.
A New York Times/Siena College poll in Florida, a key battleground state, shows Clinton at 51 percent support among voters aged 18-34 years old. In 2008, Barack Obama's historic victory relied on 66 percent
of the youth vote nationally.
That's a problem, says Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "Much lower turnout among young voters is a net benefit for Trump because his base of support is much more reliant on older voters," he says. Those voters, he adds, are much more likely to show up and vote on election day.
More importantly, the number of young voters in that recent Florida poll backing a third-party candidate, like Libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Party candidate Jill Stein, is at 27 percent.
(Reuters)Irizarry herself considered backing Johnson until a recent, very public, gaffe when he asked a TV host "what is Aleppo?" in response to a question about Syria.
For Caleb Weaver, 22, it's pretty clear why Clinton is struggling. "They [the Clinton campaign] have totally failed to make a proactive case for why she is a progressive candidate worth supporting," says the Atlanta resident who backed Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who ran against Clinton in the Democratic primaries. "Progressives supporting Stein or not voting at all are acting out of a discontent with the two-party status quo that goes right back to political and policy decisions made by the Clintons and their allies." Still, Weaver plans to follow Sanders' endorsement of Clinton and vote for her if only to keep Trump from becoming president.
In the past four days, the Clinton campaign has responded to the perceived lack of enthusiasm, blitzing university campuses in important voting states with their stars. On Friday, First Lady Michelle Obama spoke at George Mason University in Virginia. On Saturday, Sanders - whose populist campaign against Clinton in the primaries drew tens of thousands of young people into politics - stumped for her in Ohio at the University of Akron and Kent State University.
On Monday, Clinton spoke at Temple University in Philadelphia. She touched on all the themes young voters care about: college tuition, criminal justice reform, solar power and gun control. But she also addressed the lack of enthusiasm head on. "Even if you're totally opposed to Donald Trump, you may still have some questions about me," she told students. "Any voter that's still undecided, give us both a fair hearing."