Impact of Millennials on 2016 Election
Millennials will make up nearly a third of the U.S. electorate
Millennials have finally caught up to baby boomers for the largest share of the voting population. The Pew Research Center estimates that 69.2 million millennials are of voting age, nearly equal to the 69.7 million baby boomers who can vote. Both generations combined make up approximately 62 percent of the U.S. electorate. But the same question arises every election: Will young voters show up at the polls?
鈥淪ince the Get Out the Vote initiative, there鈥檚 been this hope that youth can be mobilized because of the potential impact they could have on any election,鈥 says听, a professor in 91桃色鈥檚听. 鈥淔or Democrats, every single time those hopes have been dashed. Young voters never show up in the numbers that the campaigns hope they would.鈥
The highest turnout for millennials came during the 2008 election, when 50 percent of eligible millennials voted. In 2012, only 46 percent of millennials cast ballots.
Then there鈥檚 the question of which candidate millennials support. 鈥淚f they do show up, I think it will be an anti-Trump vote, not a pro-Clinton vote.鈥 Wadsworth says millennials don鈥檛 fit the typical makeup of a Trump supporter鈥攇enerally someone in the middle to upper class, white and male.
鈥淚 have found students to be utterly alarmed by Trump and angry that they are inheriting a situation like this,鈥 Wadsworth says about millennial students in her classes. 鈥淚 think millennials are savvy to the dangers that someone like Trump represents to the political process.鈥
Wadsworth speculates that her millennial students view Hillary Clinton as a more capable candidate, one they already know as a Secretary of State. She says a majority of the support for Trump is coming from baby boomers and Generation X.
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