Poll: Clinton outpacing Obama with millennials
Hillary Clinton has a 28-point lead over Donald Trump among millennial voters — outpacing Barack Obama’s margin in 2012 — during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, a new poll says.
The data, from the Harvard University Institute of Politics, shows Clinton gaining 6 points since the group’s pre-convention polling. The most significant boost came to her favorability, which jumped significantly over the past three months while Trump’s high unfavorable rating has held firm.
{mosads}Clinton (D) wins support from 49 percent of likely voters ages 18 to 29, compared with 21 percent for Trump (R). Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson has 14 percent support, and the Green Party’s Jill Stein is at 5 percent.
That 28-point lead is higher than Obama’s 19-point lead over Republican Mitt Romney in the Harvard poll released two weeks before the 2012 presidential election.
The Democratic nominee went from a net favorability rating of minus 29 this summer to minus 13 in the latest data. Among likely voters in the age group, she fared even better, with 48 percent viewing her favorably and 51 percent unfavorably.
Trump’s net favorability has barely moved since Harvard started polling in April. His rating of minus 60 has shifted to minus 54, with 22 percent of millennials viewing him favorably and 76 percent viewing him unfavorably.
The 19 percent of millennials interested in backing a third-party candidate appear to be hurting Clinton more than Trump, Harvard pollster John Della Volpe told reporters on Wednesday.
When those candidates weren’t included, Clinton’s lead over Trump grew. And 37 percent of Johnson supporters consider themselves likely to change their minds before Election Day.
The Institute’s poll ran Oct. 7–17, starting just one day before the release of a 2005 recording in which Trump talks about groping women without their consent.
While the poll didn’t specifically gauge millennials’ views on the tape, or the subsequent sexual assault allegations levied against Trump, Clinton holds a 37-point lead with young women, 14 points higher than Obama had in 2012
The apparent coalescence of young voters around Clinton comes after months of concern from Democrats about a lack of enthusiasm among the bloc.
Della Volpe, the Harvard pollster, told The Hill earlier this month that he found a pervasive ambivalence among millennials during a recent focus group he conducted in Philadelphia.
“A lot of them have a harder time than I expected understanding the difference that President Trump would have in their personal life compared to President Clinton,” he said.
“That is very scary for Hillary Clinton.”
But Clinton has increased her focus on the voting bloc last month with a speech where she asked for a “fair hearing,” and her campaign has held a steady series of events with surrogates aimed at shoring up millennial support, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and celebrities including Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry.
And the numbers from Della Volpe’s new poll may give Clinton’s campaign some reassurance because more of her millennial supporters consider themselves “enthusiastic” than those backing Trump.
The Institute polled 2,150 Americans ages 18 to 29 between Oct. 7-17. The margin of error for the sample is 3.1 percentage points.
– Updated at 1:30 p.m.
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