The Iowa Caucus this past Monday was an exciting race among the Democrats with Clinton beating Sanders by 0.3% of caucus participants (1). Bernie fans do not distress, even though Clinton won a majority of the delegates, a couple months ago even the idea of Bernie coming close to defeating Hillary was a seemingly unattainable dream. To the disbelief of many, Bernie has been able to hold his own and actually now has a 18.4 point lead over Hillary in New Hampshire (2).
Bernie’s main supporters are the younger generation or the millennials. The millennials, ranging in age from 17-29 support Bernie over Hillary by a 70 point margin (3). Hillary has tried to swing this enormous gap back in her favor, but has done so through awkward and seemingly forced appearances like her dancing on the Ellen show where she attempted to perform some “hip” dance moves like the “whip”. As a millennial watching this cringe worthy attempts at dance made me feel uncomfortable to be honest.
Bernie’s main issue to win the election is to get the millennials to actually vote. While he does hold this massive lead over Clinton in this one demographic, younger generations are notoriously bad at voting. In the 2012 election, only 38% of voters aged 18-24 voted (4) while as an entire population, 62.3% voted (5). This is a substantial gap that could mean the difference in who becomes the Democratic Presidential nominee. Regardless of who you plan to vote for (if you are of age), I encourage you to go and exercise this Constitutional right and make your voice heard.
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3 comments:
Thank You for your article. I find it extremely interesting how only not so long ago Sanders would have been thought of as having no chance against Clinton in Iowa, but when we see the results now we are looking at something completely different, a practical tie. And I think this just comes to show how much power the younger generation has in this country. At the end of the day everyone gets one vote, so no matter how involved older people are in politics and no matter how much more they think they know about politics than us, we as the younger generation can still cause a significant change in voting. And I believe what we saw in Iowa is just a sneak peek showing us that this country's younger population is going in the right direction by going out and voting, and Bernie is doing a great job at getting the younger people to do this.
And as you said no matter who you vote for, everyone should go out and vote and exercise their right, because a lot of us might think our one vote will make a significant change, but if we all go out and vote, It definitely will make a change.
I do not think it is surprising that Sanders has the majority of the millennial demographic because the one issue people associate Sanders with (at least I do) is student loans and college tuition. Sanders wants to lower the cost of college and student loans for students which many people in the millennial demographic struggle with. I honestly do no know much about Sanders (near nothing actually) but I do know he wants to help fix that issue. I think he has successfully appealed to the millennial demographic not only because of all the attention he is giving this issue but also because of his slogan "feel the Bern". I have seen this slogan literally everywhere (but mostly on bumper stickers). This slogan also appeals to the millennial demographic because it is based off of a meme which the younger generation always seems to be laughing at.
It is almost a miracle how quickly Bernie elevated through the polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire, and I understand the real difficulty of getting younger people to vote, since Bernie does normally attract younger and more liberal people. If he can harness the power of the generations directly above us, I genuinely believe that Bernie could be our next president. Many claim that he is practically a socialist, and while that claim is a little outrageous, he is making some big promises that people feel really strongly about. I think that in order to keep his polls up during primary season, he really needs to focus on get out the vote activities, especially on college campuses in order to encourage our youth to be more involved in politics. I don't necessarily know if all of this will be enough for him to overcome Hillary, even with his admirable balance of policies that seem to woo the right people. It just seems that Hillary is more moderate, which may help her in the end, and a bit more known then Bernie. I guess we will see!
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