A new poll offering a deep dive into the political views of the youngest American voters finds them favoring Hillary Clinton and no less likely to vote than they were in 2012, but younger Americans’ outlook on the country’s future centers far more on fear than hope.
A majority of Americans under age 30, 51%, say they feel fearful about America’s future, and only 41% say they expect to be better off than their parents are today, according to the survey released Wednesday by the Harvard Institute of Politics.
The poll suggests no drop-off in interest in politics among young Americans compared with 2012. The share saying they plan to vote is on par with this stage in the 2012 election, and just about the same share consider themselves politically engaged now as did four years ago. But those likely to vote are less apt to back the Democratic presidential nominee now than they were to support Barack Obama in that year’s election.
In 2012, exit polls found voters under 30 made up about 1 in 5 voters nationwide and were critical to Obama’s re-election, breaking in his favor by a 60% to 37% margin. While Clinton holds a wide lead among these voters — her 28-point margin is actually a few points wider than Obama’s advantage in the exit poll — both she and Republican nominee Donald Trump lag behind the 2012 nominees from their respective parties as third-party candidates shave off about 1 in 5 voters: 49% say they back Clinton, 21% Trump, with 14% favoring Libertarian Gary Johnson and 5% Green Party nominee Jill Stein. Another 11% said they are undecided about their vote.
Comparing the results of the new poll to a Harvard IOP poll conducted around this time in 2012, Clinton fares slightly worse than Obama among Democrats surveyed, holding an 82-point edge over Trump compared with Obama’s 90-point lead at this time over Mitt Romney, but Trump is significantly underperforming Romney among younger Republicans. While likely Republican voters under age 30 favored Romney by 81 points at this point in 2012, they tilt toward Trump by 64 points in the new poll.
That shift may have tilted young white voters more toward the Democrat than the Republican — they favored Romney by 4 points at this stage in 2012 but tilt Clinton by 8 now. But Clinton underperforms Obama among young Hispanics, topping Trump by 45 points though Obama topped Romney by 60 among young Hispanics in October 2012.
Racial divides were apparent throughout the poll, as some in the country’s most diverse generation are set to take their first turn in the voting booth.
Nearly 8 in 10, 78%, say they are at least somewhat concerned about the state of race relations in America. Broad majorities of young blacks (85%) and Hispanics (72%) say that people of their own racial background are under attack at least a little in America today. Even among whites, 45% feel that people of their racial background are under attack. Most, 56%, feel the tone of the current presidential campaign has harmed race relations in the country.
The poll also found race and gender divides on young Americans’ outlook for the future. Whites were more apt than others to say they feel fearful about the future of the country, with 60% of white women and 54% of white men saying they felt more fearful than hopeful, and among blacks and Hispanics, women were more apt to express fear for the future than men were. Overall, though, young black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than young whites to say they expect to be better off financially than their parents.
When asked whether race relations specifically would improve under each of the major presidential candidates, 62% said they expected them to worsen under Trump, while just 22% said the same about a Clinton presidency.
Younger voters also trust Clinton over Trump by wide margins on top issues, including improving the economy (56% Clinton to 28% Trump), uniting the country (60% to 19%), dealing with immigration (58% to 29%), combating the spread of terrorism (55% to 27%) and addressing inequality (64% to 18%).
The Harvard Institute of Politics poll of Americans age 18 to 29 was conducted online from October 7 through 17. Results for interviews among 2,150 adults under age 30 have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Respondents are members of the GfK KnowledgePanel, a group recruited using probability sampling methods via telephone and mail surveys and are representative of the national population.
