Younger Voter Turnout May Hit 2008 Levels: Bad New for Trump

Candidly, I am to the point where I see Donald Trump as the embodiment of evil, with Moscow Mitchell McConnell, Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen, and of course the Trump supporting evangelicals and Catholics not far behind in magnitude of moral degradation.  If there ever was a time for younger voters (and I would argue, black, Hispanic and other minority voters) to go to the polls it is now.  They will all suffer immensely if Trump is re-elected in November.  Thankfully, a new poll of 18- to 29-year-olds from the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics shows Joe Biden with far higher support than Hillary Clinton received and a far higher percentage saying they will definitely vote than what occurred in 2016.  With luck, this phenomenon combined with Democrat fury the GOP/Trump effort to ram through an ultra far right zealot to appointment to the Supreme Court will prove the death knell for Trump's reelection chances (and of numerous other Republicans).  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the poll findings.  Here are highlights:

Ever since the beginning of the Democratic presidential primaries, one big worry about Joe Biden was that he would fail to inspire passion and energy in young voters. But since then, we’ve seen both the coronavirus crisis and protests against police brutality explode across the country — both of which might prove, for young people, to be defining political events.

Could that help produce the sort of youth turnout in this election that we last saw in 2008, when Barack Obama’s first presidential run inspired young people to pour out to the polls in unprecedented numbers?

The answer to this might be yes, according to a new poll of 18- to 29-year-olds from the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics.

The poll finds that among likely voters in that 18-to-29 demographic, Biden is leading President Trump by 60 percent to 27 percent among likely voters. That’s significantly better than the 49 percent that Hillary Clinton got in this poll in 2016.

But that’s not all. The poll also finds that an astonishing 63 percent of respondents say they will “definitely be voting,” compared to 47 percent in the 2016 version of this poll.

While this comparison between the two subsets isn’t perfect, it nonetheless indicates that it’s reasonable to posit that 18- to 29-year-olds might post 2008-level turnout this time, according to Chase Harrison, the acting director of the Institute of Politics poll.

“I would assume that we should see actual turnout among 18-to-29 year-olds similar to actual turnout in 2008,” Harrison told me. “Young voters care about this election.” If so, that would be striking.

[I]n 2008 the turnout among this youth demographic ended up being 48.4 percent of eligible voters, according to data from University of Florida demographer Michael McDonald.

That dwarfs youth turnout in any election going back at least to the mid-1980s. If that replicates itself, it could give a lift to efforts to defeat Trump.

Here another wrinkle intrudes: The poll also finds that enthusiasm for Biden is lagging a bit, with 44 percent of young Trump voters being very enthusiastic about voting for him while 30 percent of young Biden voters say the same.

Despite this, not only is Biden winning by 2-to-1 among these voters; the overall demographic is promising 2008 levels of turnout. How can this be?

“This is a cohort that has been in many ways uniquely affected by covid,” Harrison told me. “Many younger voters have had their entry into the labor market delayed. They’re facing all sorts of challenges.”

Harrison pointed out that many young voters might have more of an identification with young immigrants who were brought here illegally as children and thus enjoyed the Obama-era protections for “dreamers” that Trump has tried to destroy. He noted that this cohort is more racially and ethnically diverse than even the 18-to-29 year-olds who rallied behind Obama the first time.

And, of course, for many young voters, the protests that have swept the country might be their first serious experience of political activism and engagement, similar to how the young people who rallied behind Obama were galvanized by opposition to the Iraq War.

[I]f youth turnout really does have a chance of attaining 2008 levels, perhaps this will constitute another way Trump has made his own comeuppance more likely.