When it comes to courting millennials, things haven’t gone all that well for Donald Trump’s campaign.
First, there was the tweet featuring his children that attempted to connect with millennials but was widely mocked. Then his son Eric Trump laughably claimed that his father appealed to millennials because he was an “entrepreneurial guy” who started with very little and became successful (in fact, Trump benefitted from his father’s wealth and connections throughout his career).
Trump’s campaign seems to be banking on the idea that millennial voters ― those aged roughly 18 to 34 ― will support him because he is an outsider who will disrupt established political institutions. Some 50 percent of millennials consider themselves political independents, according to a 2014 Pew Research Survey.
“Like many of my fellow millennials, I do not consider myself categorically Republican or Democrat,” Ivanka Trump said at the Republican National Convention in July. “Sometimes it’s a tough choice. That is not the case this time.”
But beyond pointing to Trump’s outsider status, the Trump campaign seems to be doing little to directly appeal to millennials ― the nation’s largest generation and an important voting block. And the tactics it has tried haven’t been so successful.
A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that Trump trails Hillary Clinton among registered millennial voters 50 percent to 34 percent (though the margin was smaller when third-party candidates were added to the survey).
Trump’s campaign did not respond to repeated requests to discuss its millennial outreach efforts.
“I don’t think that Donald Trump has an appeal to millennials at all. I think they have fully rejected him. Their campaign’s outreach to millennials is a joke, it basically consists of one Instagram post if his children that one of his children put up and that’s essentially it,” Addisu Demissie, Clinton’s voter outreach and mobilization director, told The Huffington Post in an interview.
Clinton has also struggled to win over millennials and has had missteps with young voters. This week, for example, audio emerged from a February fundraiser in which she described Sanders supporters as “living in their parents’ basement.” However, her campaign is at least making a concerted effort to reach out to millennials, with at least five staffers dedicated to the task.
Last month, she gave a speech addressing what’s at stake for them in the election. Recently the campaign has dispatched several surrogates popular with young voters, including first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). On Friday, her campaign released a video featuring all of them, although the video’s title ― “Squad goals” ― tried a little too hard to be hip.
Despite the tendency to group them together, Clinton’s campaign also recognizes that millennials are a diverse generation.
“We really have to understand, and we do as a campaign, that when you’re talking to a 19-year-old college student and you’re talking to a 33-year-old mother of 3, you’re not having the same conversation,” Demissie said.
The campaign has hosted events targeting different groups within the millennial generation. These have included young professional happy hours as well as events on college campuses, barber shops, sneaker stores and “black girl magic” meetups, where women of color can come together to discuss the issues affecting them.
“In our millennial program, like in any other program, we try to go to where people are. And so, barbershops and beauty salons in the black community are where people go to talk about politics often. We leverage that and take advantage of that and make sure that we’re there too to talk about politics, to talk about Hillary Clinton,” Demissie said.
Trump, meanwhile, has struggled to connect on college campuses as several college Republican groups have refused to endorse him. The 2014 Pew survey also found that millennials are the “most racially diverse generation in American history,” which bodes badly for a campaign built around insulting minority groups. Trump has repeatedly pledged to ban Muslims from entering the United States and called Mexicans rapists and criminals.
The different approaches to millennial outreach are clear from the policies each campaign lays out on their website. Clinton’s campaign website has entire sections dedicated to fighting sexual assault on college campuses, making college debt-free and ensuring equal rights for LGBT Americans. Trump’s website doesn’t address any of these issues.
While Trump’s campaign has struggled to connect with millennials, at least they’ve bought a few Snapchat filters.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularlyincitespolitical violence and is a
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