A new poll out of Harvard’s Institute of Politics is getting a lot of attention, probably because it appears to send a surprising message: Young voters are moving towards the GOP. But some caution is in order.
Are today’s young voters turning into Alex P. Keaton?
The poll aims to shed light on how Millennial voters are feeling about the midterms. The first and most important caveat: The findings that are grabbing headlines are based on the younger voters who say they are “definitely” voting in this election–which is 26 percent of the total respondents. That is the group that says–by a 4-point margin–it would prefer a Republican-controlled Congress.
As you might have heard, this is an election that Republicans are very motivated to participate in, and Democrats are…well, whatever the opposite of motivated might be, they’re that. To the extent the poll captures anything particularly notable, it would be that young Democrats, like older Democrats, are not very excited about this vote.
The poll was nonetheless covered pretty widely; sometimes the reporting was careful not to overstate the facts, but that wasn’t a concern of whoever wrote headlines like “Poll Shows Democrats Slipping Among Young Voters” (New York Times, 10/29/14) or “Majority of Millennials Turn On Obama, Favor a GOP-Led Congress” (ABC News, 10/29/14).
“Harvard Poll Finds a Majority of Young Voters Prefer GOP” is the San Francisco Chronicle‘s headline (11/1/14) over a piece by Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post (10/30/14), an article that was more nuanced than the headline would suggest:
Given young people’s voting records, and Republicans’ efforts to suppress the youth vote altogether, why are Millennials suddenly turning into Republicans en masse?
The answer is they aren’t. If you look at the entire universe of young people in Harvard’s poll–not just respondents who say they’ll “definitely” vote but also those who say they’re less likely to vote–they say they would prefer a Democratic-led Congress to a Republican-led one.
A similarly skeptical note came from Mark Murray, senior political editor of NBC News (10/29/14), who provided
a reality check: Most polls continue to show Democrats with a sizable advantage among young voters. For instance, our NBC/WSJ/Annenberg poll has interviewed a total of 4,368 likely voters this fall. And in this big sample, those who are 18 to 29 years old prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress by 10 points, 51 percent to 41 percent–which is pretty much how they broke in the 2010 election (55 percent to 42 percent).
So the shift is not as dramatic as you might think. But, unsurprisingly, it is portrayed differently on the Fox News Channel. Here’s how Fox News political reporter Carl Cameron broke it down on the O’Reilly Factor (10/29/14):
The academic ivory tower has done a poll that says Millennials have kind of changed their sensibilities. For years, young folks have been voting predominantly Democrat. But the Harvard survey suggests that they have shifted and shifted considerably, so that more than half of Millennials say that they are very interested in watching what’s going on with this election and that most of them, more than Democrats, are going to be voting for Republicans. That is a very big deal…very bad news for Democrats.
Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank (10/31/14) used the poll to flesh out a column about Rand Paul’s chances to become president in 2016. The Harvard poll, Milbank wrote, ” gave a big boost to Paul’s rationale for running.” As he put it:
The Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School released a survey of millennial voters showing that this 18- to 29-year-old demographic, a rock-solid Democratic constituency a few years ago, is now up for grabs. If this is true, the Republican Party, in the right hands, might be able to defuse the demographic time bomb ticking at party headquarters.
That’s not really what the poll shows, though. It suggests that in a midterm election that Republicans (and most Democrats) think will result in significant Republican victories, Republican voters are more excited about voting. Beyond that, it shows that Barack Obama is less popular now than he used to be, which doesn’t feel all that newsworthy.
The fact that there’s no “there” there has never deterred the corpress from making the trip when there’s a narrative to nudge along, has it now?
Regarding the statement about “Republicans’ efforts to suppress the youth vote”, I read about the legislation to which this refers. Peter Hart seems to have gone out of his way to find some very strange state-level legislation that has been enacted and attributed it to all Republicans. I don’t know of anyone who is trying to suppress anyone’s vote. I disagree with the idea of two-levels of ids as in the North Carolina legislation — one should be sufficient — nor do I think there is any real gain in forcing colleges to charge in-state tuition for out-of-state students because they want to vote in Ohio. As a matter of fact, I think it is better for out-of-state students to pay the higher tuition so the state doesn’t have to contribute as much to their funding.
The only voter restriction that I believe should be in place is to show a valid photo id when voting. The id should be provided by the state using county offices and no one should be charged for the id. This would eliminate the chances that anyone is voting more than once. If you are eligible to vote, then go ahead and do it. But do it only once.
Part of this problem can be attributed to the Democrats who want to grant voting rights to everyone, including illegal aliens. Please note that I said “illegal” aliens, not all aliens. Illegal aliens are here illegally. That should be enough to prevent them from voting. Perhaps we could help them vote in their respective homelands but not here, please.
Voting would be the way to get rid of the unstable politicians who are enacting these very strange voter-suppression laws, but please do it responsibly and legitimately.