The party's presidential front-runner is taking the vulnerability seriously. Some say it reminds them of Clinton in 2016, and won't be easy to overcome.
WASHINGTON — Joe Biden consolidated his gains as he races to the Democratic nomination, dominated in a trio of primaries last Tuesday among voters male and female, rich and poor, white and non-white, college and high school graduates.
But there was one glaring exception: Young voters.
Voters under 45 continued to support Bernie Sanders by huge margins in Florida, Illinois and Arizona even as other groups came around to Biden. The gap has been largest with voters in their 20s or teens, mirroring a problem that hurt Hillary Clinton in key states: a lack of youth excitement.
“I'm deeply concerned about the impact that a lack of enthusiasm from young voters could have in a general election,” said Neil Sroka, a spokesman for Democracy For America, a progressive advocacy group that backs Sanders. “The consistent concern has been that nominating Vice President Biden would be essentially a repeat of the 2016 election.”
Failing to excite young voters in the primary has been a “significant red flag” for Democrats in recent decades, Sroka said: Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who were backed by young people, went on to win the election, while Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore lacked that enthusiasm and ended up losing.
Biden’s dilemma reflects a generational party divide between older moderates who were content with the Obama-era status quo, and younger voters hungry for the disruptive change Sanders represents as they risk becoming the first in U.S. history to be economically worse off than their parents.
Biden is winning the proxy war because older voters have turned out in larger numbers than younger ones. But to complete the job and win the presidency, Biden recognizes he has work to do — he can’t afford for young people to stay home or vote third party, as many did in the last election.
'Take this very seriously'
Voters under 30 made up 19 percent of the electorate in 2016 and in 2012, but Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory with this group was five points lower than Obama’s margin, according to exit polls.
The numbers were devastating in swing states that decided the election. In 2012, Wisconsin voters under 30 backed Obama by 23 points; in 2016, that group dipped as a share of the electorate and Clinton won them by a mere 3 points. In 2012, Pennsylvania voters under 30 supported Obama by 28 points; in 2016 they favored Clinton by 9 points.
An Economist/YouGov trial heat survey this month between Biden and President Donald Trump found Biden leading by 4 points overall, and winning the same 55 percent of voters under 30 that Clinton won in 2016. Eight percent were unsure who they’d vote for and another 8 percent said they would not vote, the poll said. Biden performed better than Clinton did with elderly voters.
“I think Biden needs to take this very seriously, both in terms of understanding that it’s a real possible problem for him but also a real opportunity," said Democratic pollster Andrew Baumann, who has studied the voting behavior of young people. "He's got some of the same challenges (that Clinton had) to make them understand that he’s not an enemy of what Bernie is trying to accomplish. He clearly isn’t, but he has some work to do convincing them of this.”
Baumann said young voters can be moved if he conveys the need for fundamental change, with policies to back it up like anti-corruption measures, getting money out of politics and standing up to oil companies and Wall Street banks. He said climate change is the No. 1 issue for many young people and that Biden could make it a larger focus of his campaign, perhaps even meet with Sunrise Movement activists to hear their concerns.
The Biden campaign sees three major differences with Clinton’s 2016 campaign, according to a source familiar with its thinking. The first is that Trump is president, unlike four years ago when many young people were complacent because they assumed he’d lose. The second is that Biden’s 2020 platform is more progressive than Clinton’s was in 2016. And the third is that Biden and Sanders like each other personally, which will make it easier to coalesce.
Biden has sought to address the problem by rolling out two new policy planks last weekend that would benefit young people: Tuition-free public colleges and universities, and allowing Americans to clear out student debt in bankruptcy. At the debate last Sunday, he promised a female vice president.
“Let me say, especially to the young voters who have been inspired by Senator Sanders: I hear you,” he said Tuesday in his victory speech. “I know what is at stake.”
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