When asked whether there was a candidate in the Democratic primary race that she particularly liked, Devin Hoffman, a freshman at Boston College, told the HPR, “Honestly, I’ve been a little disappointed by all of them.” Grace Stewart, a freshman at Providence College, said that she “did[n’t] love any of them.” Jayna Robatham, a freshman at Bowdoin College, said she supported Beto O’Rourke, but will “stand behind whichever candidate ends up winning the [Democratic] nomination.” All three disclosed that they did not support President Trump.
As the 2020 presidential race gets underway, new polls stream out to the public at a daily pace. While we are still a year out from November 3, 2020, these preliminary polls serve to illustrate current national sentiments and inform the candidates about the issues that matter to the American public. However, young women such as Hoffman, Stewart, and Robatham represent a group largely ignored by mainstream polling: female voters aged 18 to 24, members of what I define as the Pynk Vote.
This must change: Both the country as a whole and those in power must hear and evaluate the opinions of those that make up the Pynk Vote. The Pew Research Center found that 2020 will mark the first time that millennials will constitute a larger portion of the electorate than baby boomers, presenting an opportunity for the Pynk Voters to flex their political muscles — that is, if they decide to show up.
The Youth and Female Vote in the United States
A large number of Americans do not exercise their right to vote; voter turnout among the voting age population fell somewhere between 59.5 percent and 63.8 percent over the last 20 years. Eighteen-to-24-year-olds voted at an even lower rate: Their highest rate of turnout in these years — 48.5 percent — fell well short of the general population’s lowest, with a general trend of decreasing turnout between 2000 and 2016. As a result of this low turnout, young people’s voices are going unheard in elections.
However, this trend has started to change. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, turnout among 18-to-24-year-olds essentially doubled between the 2014 and 2018 midterm elections. Significantly, even though 2018 saw the highest midterm turnout rate since 1966, youth turnout increased much more than the turnout rate as a whole. Additionally, turnout rates of young women and men differed; in 2018, women in the 18-to-24-year-old cohort voted by almost 6 percentage points more than men of the same age. In 2014, that gap was only two percentage points, indicating that young women increased their turnout more than young men between 2014 and 2018.
This data reflects an important trend: The young vote, especially the Pynk Vote, is becoming more active and thus more impactful. Looking into the future, top pollsters believe that this activity will continue into the 2020 election. John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Institute of Politics, told the HPR that he is “very optimistic that [the nation] … will likely crack the 50 percent threshold” of young voter turnout in 2020. Bolstering this assertion, the extensive Spring 2019 Harvard IOP Youth Poll found that the number of young Americans aged 18 to 29 likely to vote in their party’s primary or caucus rose 7 percentage points in 2019, reaching 43 percent; turnout in the general election will likely be higher, since primary elections typically attract only the most committed voters. Looking at the big picture, “interest in voting in the 2020 election is 18 months ahead,” Peter Hart, founder of the polling firm Hart Research, told the HPR. “The stakes are so high, people care so much, the interest is way up.” The point? The Pynk Vote will show up.
What’s Behind this Pynk Rush?
This trend of increasing youth participation makes sense given that young people have created impactful social movements worldwide, with young female leaders specifically galvanizing the Pynk voice. The rise of movements such as March for Our Lives and of young leaders like Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg attests to the fact that young women have begun to assert their dominance and raise their voices over the last five years. At the Thanksgiving dinner of American politics, young Americans refuse to sit any longer at the kids’ table, and now demand to sit with the adults, where the issues that affect their lives are discussed in hushed tones. “We’re showing up because we are angry and we want people to make changes so that we can lead the lives we want to lead,” Kenyatta Thomas, co-president of the Women’s March Youth Program, told the HPR; as “young women, we’re beginning to realize the power that we have,” she concluded.
Furthermore, women have led the charge in changing the political and social landscape of the United States since the 2016 election. The #MeToo movement has swept the nation and allowed women to share the abuse and discrimination they have suffered, shedding light on a massive problem in the country. One day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, three million women attended the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, which the movement notes was “the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.” The Brookings Institute deemed 2018 the “Year of the Woman,” as women won 106 seats in the House and Senate. Hart presented the bottom line for these phenomena, saying that “women feel as though their voice and their stake in society is that much greater than it used to be” on issues ranging from “the right to choose to the #MeToo movement.” It is this increase in stakes that is leading to increased participation amongst the Pynk Voters.
What Are The Stakes to Pynk Voters?
In order to make predictions about who the Pynk Vote might turn out for, it is crucial to evaluate those stakes and determine what they care about.
The Spring 2019 Harvard IOP Poll found that the youth surveyed cared most about climate change — 46 percent — the moral direction of the country — 61 percent — and gun violence — 58 percent. Given that the percentage of people who felt these issues were important grew from 2015 to 2019, it is clear that these concerns have moved to the forefront of young voters’ minds. Further, Della Volpe said that “views related to guns were most predictive of whether or not someone was going to turnout in the 2018 midterm elections,” and that youth “see the issues of climate and gun violence … as frankly matters of life or death.” Since young voters take these issues so seriously, their civic engagement is likely rising as a result.
Tabitha St. Bernard-Jacobs, director of community engagement for the Women’s March, has other insights thanks to a survey that the Women’s March conducted among its members. According to that survey, “immigration rights, climate change, and reproductive justice” impacted Women’s March members the most and “would be driving them to the polls in 2020,” she explained to the HPR. Anusha Chinthalapale, the other Women’s March Youth Program co-president, added that “reproductive justice is not even a partisan issue, it’s about who’s going to … help [women] to maintain those rights.” Chinthalapale continued that gun violence and racial equity also topped the priority lists of the young women she had spoken to. Della Volpe noted that when women vote, they also “[take] the identity of others, often times more marginalized people within society” into consideration, possibly underscoring the notion that many of the issues that young women care about do not only affect themselves, but many others in society. Thus, there are many issues that are important to young women; however, the ones noted thus far are those which any candidate they support for 2020 will have to get behind.
Moving Forward: The Pynk Vote in 2020
Given the issues that young millennial women care about, they will likely affiliate with the Democratic Party. The current administration has not made progress on issues such as climate change, gun violence, or reproductive rights, while the Democrats have placed such issues at the core of their campaigns. “I think that young women recognize that [Democrats] have a track record in achieving equity for all,” Thomas said to further explain young women’s support for the party. Bolstering this assertion, a 2018 Pew Research study found that millennials lean Democratic; on this point Hart added that “if the share of the total electorate that young people make increases, it’s, one, great for democracy, and, two, it’s going to be great for the Democratic Party.” More generally, Pew also found that women lean Democratic, especially when compared to men. As a result, the Pynk Vote likely leans Democratic, perhaps by even larger margins than women or young people by themselves.
Clearly, young women are ready to raise their voices in the next election, compelling the current Democratic candidates to seek out their voices and their votes. In terms of specific candidates the Pynk Voters are currently supporting, a recent Quinnipiac poll found that Warren, Biden, Sanders, and Buttigieg lead the Democratic polls within the female and youth demographics nationally. Warren in particular gained over 30 percentage points of support in both demographics. Thus, in the Venn diagram of youth and femininity that is the Pynk Vote, Warren seems to be the most popular candidate amongst the cohort today; however, until polls start looking at the Pynk Vote explicitly, that cannot be said definitively.
It is also important to evaluate how these candidates would fare against President Trump in the general election. An October 23 CNN/SSRS poll found that when looking at the youth — 18-to-34-year-olds — and female votes separately, Biden, Warren, Sanders, and Buttigieg would all beat Trump by at least 25 points if the general election were to take place today. Once again, while the Pynk Vote was not evaluated, due to the similarity of responses between the young and female respondents in this poll, it can be assumed that Pynk Voters feel the same.
While these polls are compelling, it is crucial to remember that the nation is still a year out from election night 2020, and that in today’s political climate, a year might as well be a millenium. On this topic, Hart told the HPR that in the primaries, “people’s attitudes are exceptionally fluid … it’s a discovery process.” However, in the general election, changing across partisan borders is “a big deal.” To an extent, this analysis makes the first data set less salient than the second data set, which shows Trump losing to any leading Democratic candidate among the Pynk Voters.
Nevertheless, no matter how young women vote in 2020, it is imperative to recognize that they have been laying the groundwork to raise their voices in the next election. As Jennifer Mandelblatt, the Women’s March youth coordinator, told the HPR, “Where we are today is because of the young people who have been leading.” Now, all they have to do is continue.