How has seven years of pummeling by economic awfulness shaped the views of America’s youngest voters? Last week, my colleagues at Harvard’s Institute of Politics (IOP) released their fall poll of Millennials, and it reveals a politically detached generation. President Obama’s election in 2008 seemed to augur in a Kennedyesque era of Democratic dominance over the young, but only 39 percent of 18-24 year olds now approve his job performance. Yet the Republican Party has made few inroads with the group, and I doubt they will until they craft policies that are directly targeted towards improving the employment prospects of the young.
I am the least hip of men, but my work as a college teacher regularly connects me with an extremely biased sample of one hundred 20 year olds. As unusual as the undergraduates who take my calculus-intensive microeconomics course are, they are still Millennials and their views echo the IOP’s poll numbers. In 2008, I was surrounded by giddy optimists, passionate about the President-to-be. I relish the enthusiasm of youth, and in those years, I assiduously avoided saying curmudgeonly things suggesting that I could not imagine how any President, especially one with little executive experience, could achieve all that was promised by the candidate of hope.
Today, my students are surpassing me in gritty realism. They are skeptical about the president and about politics more broadly. The same picture is shown by the IOPs larger and more representative sample. While 43 percent of their respondents in 2008 said that they were politically engaged, only 22 percent claimed such engagement in the more recent poll.
In 2008, 56 percent of the poll’s respondents said that they favored Barack Obama, as opposed to 30 percent who favored McCain. In 2009, 43 percent of the poll’s 18-24 year old respondents identified themselves as Democrats, as opposed to only 23 percent who identified themselves as Republicans.
In the latest poll, that partisan gap is almost gone. Only 31 percent of 18-24 year olds identified themselves as Democrats; 25 percent chose the Party of Lincoln. Fifty-two percent of 18 to 24 year olds would like to recall and replace President Obama, which is higher (barely) than the share of this group that would like to recall and replace the U.S. Congress.
This shift does not mean that the Obama generation has changed its minds. The 25-29 year olds today, who were the younger group in 2009, still split for the Democrats 38 to 22. Job approval is also slightly higher—43 percent—among this older group. Only 40 percent of the older respondents would like to recall and replace the President.
Instead, the IOP data suggests that a new crop of voters, who came of age during long years of economic distress, have a new mindset which is not particularly loyal to the President or his party. This change is surely good news for Republicans, but declining enthusiasm for the Democrats is not coupled with growth in support for the GOP. The share of 18-24 year olds who identify themselves as Republicans in actually fell between 2011 and 2013.
What would get these Millennials excited about an alternative candidate? The survey provides only limited clues. They are concerned above all with the economy, which is unsurprising given that 19 percent of them are looking for a job. Forty-five percent of them say that religion is “very important” in their lives. Almost eighty percent are on Facebook.
Their favored strategies for reducing the Federal debt include reducing America’s nuclear arsenal and cutting foreign aid. They are also enthusiastic about imposing a 30 percent minimum tax on the very rich (the “Buffett Rule”) and cutting food stamp payments. Their least favorite choices for cutting the debt include reducing Medicare or social security benefits and they really hate the idea of reducing Federal aid for education.
This generation seems ideologically eclectic, neither passionately progressive nor didactically anti-government. Winning their love is going to require something new.
Given the years of economic trauma, and their inward-looking answers to the poll data, I suspect that the path to millennial hearts runs through their wallets. They want jobs and they do not seem to buy either the traditional Democratic answer of bigger government or the Republican response of lower taxes. Their skepticism seems to demand tangible, credible steps towards better job prospects.
The most natural tool is to adjust tax policy to offer enhance job creation for the young. The cheapest solution is to eliminate social security taxes for those under 25, and phase-in those payroll taxes for slightly older workers. The proposal could be made budget neutral if this group then faced a higher minimum social security retirement age. The Millennials in the survey were much more enthusiastic about raising social security retirement ages than they were about cutting benefits, which suggests that they would probably be happy with this compromise. Reduced payroll taxes would make hiring this group more attractive and give them more take-home pay.
A second, stronger policy would be to recognize that the Federal government has as much of an interest in connecting young workers with jobs as it does in educating them. The skills learned at work are at least as valuable as those learned in the academy. One approach would be to follow the Federal education model and provide states with Financial aid to craft policies that created jobs for the young, putting measurement and incentives in place to ensure performance.
A third approach is to favor companies that disproportionately employ the young, just like we favor minority-owned businesses. Such firms could face fewer Federal regulations, perhaps including those relating to healthcare. We could even consider granting them some token tax privileges.
But the most important first step is to reach out to this battered group and acknowledge that this new generation needs new policies. Politicians will always favor the middle-aged and elderly American, who are more engaged and better organized, but these younger voters are up for grabs. Will either party evolve to embrace this disengaged generation?
Edward Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard.
