Hillary Clinton Is Beating Donald Trump, Winning Millennials By 28 Points

Hillary Clinton is in the lead with the millennials and beating Donald Trump by 28 percentage points among voters aged 18 to 29. It doesn’t look like young adults are falling for any of Trump’s antics.

According to a new survey by the Harvard Institute of Politics, there is serious trouble ahead for Republicans. The national survey was released today, and The Wall Street Journal reported that Secretary Clinton is backed by 49 percent of likely voters under the age of 30, compared to just 21 percent for Donald Trump.

Libertarian Party representative Gary Johnson has 14 percent of the millennial vote, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein has five percent support.

The KnowledgePanel survey was conducted with the Government and Academic Research team of Gfk for the Institute of Politics during Oct. 7-17. The survey included 2,150 millennials aged 18-29. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.11 percentage points.

This most recent poll could mean that Donald Trump would set back GOP efforts to improve its standing with millennials. The millennial age group is extremely important for the presidential candidate to have a chance to be elected. This age group is a voting bloc that is about to surpass baby boomers as the largest generation of eligible voters.

In October 2012, the Harvard survey revealed that the GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, only had 36 percent of the young voters’ support. Barack Obama was a magnet for millennial voters and had over 55 percent of young voter support.

The polling director of the Harvard Institute of Politics, John Della Volpe, said that Hillary Clinton’s lead against Donald Trump with the millennial vote is noteworthy because the millennial category is the one age group that Clinton has notoriously struggled with.

“She has had a very complicated relationship with this generation for eight years. She understood the importance of this vote. If not for millennials, this would be a much closer race.”

During the Democratic primary campaign, Senator Bernie Sanders was a favorite of the young voters. However, when Bernie dropped out of the race, Hillary failed to absorb all of his supporters.

Despite Hillary’s lead with the millennials, it is important to note that both candidates are still viewed more negatively than positively. But while Hillary Clinton’s image has improved in the eyes of voters since July, Donald Trump’s has remained about the same.

Among likely young voters, Mrs. Clinton is viewed favorably by 48% and unfavorably by 51%.

Clinton has definitely benefited from the strong negative feelings most young voters have about Donald Trump. The one issue Clinton may run into is if millennial voters choose to vote for a third-party candidate or not to vote at all.

“The choice was between Clinton, Johnson and the couch.”

An interesting point that Mr. Della Volpe mentioned was that Johnson lost a significant amount of support from young voters after he slipped up on an interview question about the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo.

Johnson’s mistake took a bigger toll on the support of millennials than people of any other age group.

Younger voters have historically shown more favor for third-party candidates than any other age group.

According to the Harvard poll, more than one-third of Mr. Johnson’s supporters said they would likely vote for another candidate on Election day. Only six percent of Hillary Clinton’s supporters and five percent of Donald Trump’s supporters said the same.

The poll also revealed that GOP voters’ commitment had dropped significantly from the last election in 2012. When asked if they would definitely vote on Election day, 59 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Republicans said yes. In 2012, 60 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of Republicans said they would definitely vote.

The poll interestingly found the general mood surrounding this year’s election to be grim and anxious. When asked how they felt about the future of the country, 51 percent said they were fearful, while only 20 percent of people said they were hopeful.

More than three-quarters said they were concerned about the state of race relations in the United States.

[Featured Image by Justin Sullivan/ Getty Images]