Ed Morrissey:
Who could have predicted this? I mean, wasn’t forcing younger Americans to buy expensive comprehensive health insurance they don’t need in order to subsidize premiums for older and sicker consumers exactly the kind of hope and change that Democrats promised millennials? They didn’t sell it quite like that, of course, but anyone who took the time to understand risk pools and utilization curves could figure it out. According to a new poll from Harvard University, millennial voters have finally done so — especially those most likely to vote next week:
A new national poll of America’s 18- to 29- year-olds by Harvard’s Institute of Politics (IOP), located at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, finds slightly more than half (51%) of young Americans who say they will “definitely be voting” in November prefer a Republican-run Congress with 47 percent favoring Democrat control – a significant departure from IOP polling findings before the last midterm elections (Sept. 2010 – 55%: prefer Democrat control; 43%: prefer Republican control). The cohort – 26% of whom report they will “definitely” vote in the midterms – appear up-for-grabs to both political parties and could be a critical swing vote in many races in November. …
The KnowledgePanel® survey of 2,029 18- to 29- year-old U.S. citizens with a margin of error of +/– 2.6 percentage points (95% confidence level) conducted with the Government and Academic Research team of GfK for the IOP between September 26 and October 9 finds:
In Contrast to Four Years Ago, Slightly More Than Half of “Likely” Young Voters Prefer a Republican-controlled Congress.
While more 18- to 29- year-olds (50%-43%) surveyed in the IOP’s fall 2014 poll would prefer that Congress be controlled by Democrats instead of Republicans, the numbers improve dramatically for the GOP when only young people who say they will “definitely vote” are studied. Among these likely voters, the IOP’s latest poll shows the preference shifting, with slightly more than half (51%) preferring a Republican-run Congress and 47 percent wanting Democrats to be in charge – a significant change from the IOP’s last midterm election poll in the fall of 2010 when Democratic control was preferred among likely voters 55 percent to 43 percent.
This survey concluded almost three weeks ago, but what would have happened in the meantime to mitigate this trend? Barack Obama continues to boot the response to Ebola, and the response to ISIS, and at the same time many of these voters will have to renavigate ObamaCare and see their prices go up for health insurance they’ll hardly use. Small wonder that millennial voters have had the same decline in approval for Obama’s job performance as the rest of the country. Obama now gets a 43/53 rating among all millennials, and 42/56 among LVs in the sample.
Ron Fournier, who sits on the IOP’s senior advisory committee, calls this “a stunning turnaround“:
