School's out! Classes are over and dreary winter days have given way to gorgeous summer afternoons. After long days in the library, students came out this week to celebrate the end of the semester. We emerged from our final exams to sit outside, read books, throw around a Frisbee or a football and catch up with our friends.
As we head home for the summer, however, the political scene on campus is hardly as cheerful. After months of weathering the cold to turn out voters for Bernie Sanders, his supporters are finally coming to grips with the fact that he will not be the Democratic nominee. For young conservatives, the prospect of a contested convention in which Republicans averted a Donald Trump nomination offered a reason to be optimistic. Now, that hope too has been shattered.
Many in the media have pointed out that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are two of the least popular nominees in recent history. All the worse for young voters who unequivocally rejected both candidates in the primaries; Bernie Sanders led Hillary Clinton with more than two-thirds of young voters, beating her by as much as 70-30 in some states and Ted Cruz led Trump 46-34 among voters under 30, in one-on-one matchups.
Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, America is gearing up for the general election. Conservative pundits -- once opposed to Trump's divisive rhetoric, now share his anger and outrage. GOP leaders are starting to fall in line. Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry and Chris Christie are aggressively advocating for The Donald. Bobby Jindal, John Huntsman, and dozens of Republican Senators will support him to avoid a Clinton presidency. Even holdouts like Paul Ryan will get behind Trump for the sake of party unity.
Moderate voters, previously immune to Trump's antics, may too join in the frenzy that is Donald Trump's campaign. Already, the newest polls show Trump dangerously close to Hillary Clinton in general election matchups. Nate Silver, Editor in Chief of 538, has diagnosed Trump-mania as being the result of tribal politics. "It is a point in favor of those who see politics as being governed by cultural identity -- a matter of seeking out one's "tribe" and fitting in with it -- as opposed to carefully calibrating one's position on a left-right spectrum," he wrote.
If Silver's hypothesis is correct, then millennials are Trump's biggest obstacle to being elected President. Whereas Boomers tend to vote down party lines, millennials reject tribal politics. One in two millennials is politically independent. Millennials support background checks but oppose gun control. They believe in small government but want to help the poor. Millennials support the Keystone Pipeline, but oppose hydraulic fracking. Whereas our parents sought ideologies to believe in, millennials - by nature of their cynicism toward the political process - are issue-based pragmatic voters.
In our forthcoming book When Millennials Rule (Post Hill Press, August 2016) we explore the millennial political identity, revealing what millennials stand for and why. Based on conversations with more than 10,000 millennials all across the country - from Kentucky to Illinois to California, we conclude that millennials are "radical realists." Breaking from the ideological purity of our parents' generation, young people tend to cross party lines and unify around centrist solutions. Rather than being tribal, young people adopt what Third Way's Michelle Diggles calls an "a la carte" worldview.
It should be no wonder then, that millennials are the least likely age group to support in Trump in the general election. Polling by USA TODAY has Hillary leading Trump 52-19. One in four young conservatives will defect to Clinton. With 78 millennials now representing a third of the electorate, young voters may present the most impenetrable roadblock to Trump's nomination.
Trump supporters say it doesn't matter, because "millennials don't vote." But if history is any guide, millennials voters could make all the difference. In 2012 millennial voters in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania gave President Obama his margin of victory. Had Mitt Romney won just 50% of young voters in these states, he would have been President. Likewise, in 2014 young conservatives came out in droves to help deliver the GOP a Senate majority.
The defection of young conservatives to Clinton is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to concerns for the GOP. In a 2014 paper, economists Ethan Kaplan and Sharun Mukand found that voter habits tend to be "sticky." In other words, young people who crossover to vote for Clinton may never come back.
Millennials are often ridiculed in the mainstream media. We're called narcissistic, irrational, stupid, selfish and self-centered. Maybe then it's a cruel twist of fate then, that we're the only thing left standing between Donald Trump and the White House.