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For political professionals of a certain age, this brand of social awareness is welcome news, and it harks back to the passage of the 26th Amendment, the 1971 measure giving 18-year-olds the vote. Since the Civil War, youth-vote advocates made a simple case: Old enough to fight, old enough to vote. Still, it took another century and the unpopular Vietnam War to lower the voting age.In 1972 the antiwar liberals who controlled the Democratic Party -- including Presidential nominee George McGovern and his advisors -- believed that the sheer mass of 25 million young voters would push McGovern over the top. It didn't: McGovern carried one state against President Nixon.
In fact, young voters have yet to determine the outcome of a Presidential race. Contrary to lore, the youth movement did not carry over from the '60s. Even in 1972, young people didn't hold Republicans responsible for Vietnam, which was launched, and escalated, under Democratic rule.
After '72, young voters' participation began declining. Their voting patterns weren't appreciably different from the rest of the public's anyway, at least until Ronald Reagan came along, when youths embraced the sunny Republican from California. In the ensuing years, as the numbers of young voters dwindled, their political identity became indistinct.
And that's where things stood -- until the Millennials arrived. They announced themselves in the 2004 contest between Bush and Sen. John Kerry. Although it received little scrutiny in the media, perhaps because it didn't affect the outcome, these results signaled a shifting wind. Not only did young voters go for the Democrat, but their level of participation ticked upward measurably. Both trends are potentially momentous. The new partisan divide is obviously significant. What's more, because this generation is so large, for the first time in U.S. history nearly as many raw votes were cast by those 30 and under as by those over 65.
Thus did the '60s slogan "Don't trust anybody over 30'' take on a new twist: If the only votes in 2004 that counted had been cast by the under-30 set, Kerry would now be President. Four years later, with growing momentum and an even greater sense of urgency, this generation may be able to call the shots in the upcoming election. The RD poll suggests that 2008 may be the year that youth is finally served.
The most eye-opening results of our poll are probably the basic horse race numbers. The RD survey contains great news for Obama, an ambivalent message for Clinton, and troubled tidings for McCain.
Nationally, among all likely voters, McCain entered the spring with a slight edge over both remaining Democratic candidates. Among Millennials, however, the poll shows Clinton with a ten-point lead over McCain -- about the same advantage recorded by Kerry in 2004. That's a bad enough sign for McCain, who did so well with young voters eight years ago. But when he is matched up against Obama, the pot boils over: Obama is well in the lead, with 55 percent to McCain's 33 percent. This is a historically unprecedented generational appeal for a national candidate and shows that an aspirational campaign based on hope and a better future hits the Millennials' sweet spot.
Horse race numbers go up and down, but the poll also shows that Millennials are more oriented to the Democratic Party than their elders, and are more liberal in outlook than previous groups of 18- to 29-year-olds. And they are backing up these ideological inclinations with their votes.
By a 32-point margin, Millennials say they voted in the Democratic rather than Republican primaries in 2008 and chose Obama over Clinton 56 to 36 (57 to 43 in caucus states). Had this trend been replicated by any other age group, Obama would easily have been nominated. For that reason, many pundits predict that the youth vote could evaporate for Democrats if Obama is not nominated. But RD pollster John Della Volpe is skeptical. "For nearly three in five Millennials," he says, "the end of the Bush Presidency is what it's about."
A whopping 94 percent of Millennials say they're likely to vote in future elections for the party they vote for this year. Millennials' leftward drift began in 2004 and continued in 2006. That year, college towns in Virginia and Montana pushed Democrats to narrow victories -- giving their party control of the Senate -- after Republican incumbents ran afoul of student sensibilities. Montana Senator Conrad Burns called his housepainter "a nice little Guatemalan man," while Virginia Senator George Allen called a student of Indian descent "macaca." His opponent's camp posted the slur on YouTube; Allen never recovered.
The 2008 candidates must be wary of similar missteps. Our poll shows that nearly half of young people have attempted to influence the vote of a friend or peer in this election, often by using Facebook, and that one-fourth of Millennials have lobbied one or more of their parents on politics.
All of this suggests that McCain will be carrying not only his own banner in November but also the banner of the GOP and its future.
Previous polling of this generation has unearthed intense interest in global warming, the great environmental issue of the era, and in multinationalism in foreign policy, which clearly reflects disapproval of the Iraq war. Liberals seize on such findings to predict a tidal wave, led by young voters, toward Democrats. It's worth noting, however, that the modern environmental movement was founded by Republicans, that political organizations have ways of adjusting to changing realities, and that both parties harbor strains of isolationism.
For now, we are left with a picture of a generation motivated to improve the world and enthralled by Barack Obama in the way that earlier generations were dazzled by John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Both of those Presidents inspired Americans to unite for the purpose of confronting huge national and global challenges. Not coincidentally, theirs are the names most often invoked on the campaign trail by the 2008 candidates.
JFK and Reagan were charter members of the Greatest Generation. But today's generation may be just as great. These young people think for themselves, are well-grounded, and want to change the world. Kennedy and Reagan would be proud.
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