When asked who they would vote for if the presidential election was held today, 56 percent of voters age 35 and under said they would vote for Hillary Clinton while 20 percent said Donald Trump, according to a poll co-commissioned by USA Today and Rock the Vote.
The Millennials survey, the third this year, is part of USA TODAY’s One Nation initiative, a series of forums across the country on the most important issues of 2016. The online poll of 1,539 adults age 18-34 was taken by Ipsos Public Affairs from Aug. 5-10. It has a credibility interval, akin to the margin of error, of 4.6
The findings have implications for politics long past the November election. If the trend continues, the Democratic Party will have scored double-digit victories among younger voters in three consecutive elections, the first time that has happened since poll consensus became available in 1952. That could shape the political affiliations of the largest generation in U.S. history for years to follow.
In the new survey, half of those under 35 say they identify with or lean toward the Democrats; just 20% identify with or lean toward Trump. 17% are independents, and another 12% either identify with another party or do not know.
Trump’s weakness among younger voters is unprecedented, lower than the 32% of the vote that the Gallup Organization calculates Richard Nixon received among 18-to-29-year-old voters in 1972, an era of youthful protests against the Vietnam War.
