newswire: 7/14/2020
- Young adults are more politically engaged now than they were in 2018, with significantly bigger shares taking actions such as registering others to vote. This is according to a new survey, which also finds that there’s no single issue that will determine their vote; the most frequently cited answer is climate change at 13%. (CIRCLE)
- 2018 was an off-year election, and 2020 is a presidential year. Political engagement is always higher in presidential years. Still, the differences between then and now are pretty striking. The share of 18- to 29-year-olds involved in different political activities rose by double-digit percentage points on every measure CIRCLE asks about.
- These actions include trying to convince other youth to vote (rising from 33% to 50%), donating money to a campaign (from 8% to 29%), attending a march or demonstration (16% to 27%), registering others to vote (from 11% to 25%), and volunteering for a political campaign (6% to 16%).
- When asked which political issue is their top priority, there’s no single issue that stands out. The most common answer, the environment/climate change, was cited by only 13% as their #1 issue. Not far behind were racism and health care affordability (both 12%). Priorities also differ by race and ethnicity. Latinos and Asians have the same top 3 priorities (the environment, racism, and health care affordability), just in a different order. Blacks are more likely to prioritize the policing of POC communities over the environment. Whites, meanwhile, don’t consider racism one of their top 3 priorities. They’re more concerned about “getting back to normal after coronavirus.”
- In 2018, health care was also a top issue for young people--but today, they express less concern about college affordability and jobs even considering the recession. Both those issues have faded in prominence as racism and the environment have risen.
- The most interesting findings here are the differences in support of Biden vs. Trump by race. Trump is deeply unpopular among young people overall (24% would vote for him today, vs. 58% who would vote for Biden). A mere 9% of black youth say they’d vote for Trump. Among Asian youth, it’s almost as low (10%).
- But the story is different among Latinos and whites. They’re about three times as likely to support Trump: 22% of Latinos would vote for him, and 29% of whites. This may seem a bit odd. Socioeconomically, Latinos are closer to African-Americans and Asians are closer to whites. So what's going on here?
- It turns out that young people are following the broader trends taking place generally in the races or ethnicities they belong to. Once upon a time, Asians of all ages once tended to favor Republicans. In 1996, for example, Asian voters were more likely to vote for Bob Dole than white voters. But Asians began turning sharply against Republicans during the GW Bush and Obama presidencies.
- Similarly, a substantial minority (one half to one third) of Latino voters have long voted to the GOP. But in recent decades that margin has not narrowed and indeed may have even grown. In 2012, for the first time, a larger share of Latinos than Asians voted for the Republican presidential candidate. That edge widened in 2016. (See "The 2018 Midterms: A Tale of Two Americas.") The persistent popularity of the Republican brand among Latinos is the subject of an interesting new book by historian Geraldo Cadava, The Hispanic Republican.
