From Amie Parnes, The Hill: Disenchantment among millennial voters is the latest worry for Democrats fighting to hold their Senate majority. Young voters rallied to President Obama’s side when he first ran for the White House in 2008, and then defied predictions that their enthusiasm would drop off in 2012. But there is no guarantee they will back Democrats at the polls next month. Plagued by unemployment and an overall economic anxiety that has seen many take jobs beneath their qualifications, the generation of 18- to 34-year-olds feels a sense of disappointment in the party it helped boost in previous elections. Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist, said that the promise of “hope and change millennials invested in has hit a brick wall.” Manley said that this, in turn, has made young voters “very cynical about the political process and less likely to vote than they had been in the past.” Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, agreed that winning over young voters is an issue for Democrats. “Obama in 2008 had been successful at exciting millennials about political institutions they distrusted and giving them faith in an economy that really wasn’t delivering on the American dream,” Zelizer said. Since then, Zelizer added, Obama “seems like politics as normal while the economy continues to crawl. With many of them still trying to find jobs and just trying to get by, the Democrats have failed to really lock in their support in any kind of realigning moment.” A poll released earlier this year showed a significant decline in the number of Democratic-leaning millennials who planned to vote in the midterm elections. The survey, conducted by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, found that young voters are increasingly turned off by the political environment. It revealed that a mere 23 percent of Democratic-leaning millennials said they would vote in the midterm election. That number was down from the 31 percent who said they would vote in the 2010 midterm elections. (Only 24 percent actually showed up at the polls that year.) At the same time, the poll indicated that 32 percent of conservative-leaning millennials said they would vote in this election. “We’ve seen a growing disenchantment with Democrats generally,” John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard’s IOP, said. While millennials were an important part of the Democratic coalition in recent election cycles, that same coalition appeared to be “fractured” now — something that should concern Democrats, Della Volpe said. Sensing a weakness, Republicans have pounced. Since losing the 2012 election, Republican National Committee officials have tried to figure out where they went wrong and how they could better appeal to various demographic groups, including young voters. The RNC hired a national youth director to appeal to college students and young voters out of school. One RNC official acknowledged that they weren’t “paying enough attention” to the millennials. “Now we are engaging with them in ways we’ve never done before,” the RNC official said. https://youtube/watch?v=5kPD4LtA1vo
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 12:40:48 +0000
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