In the 2012 presidential elections, President Barack Obama won the youth vote by 37 percentage points. Studies show that the election was decided by the youth vote. Yet the latest results of the Harvard Public Opinion Project survey reveal that Republicans have only managed to damage their position among youth since the 2012 elections.
Currently, 23 percent of youth approve of the job performance of the GOP in Congress. This is a 12 percentage point drop in performance since the fall of 2009, the beginning of the Obama administration and the first time this question was asked on the HPOP survey. The GOP has managed to gain four percentage points on their approval since the fall of 2013, when their approval ratings hit a record low, coinciding with the shutdown of the federal government and the adoption of a pattern of obstructionist behavior by the GOP.
Most significantly, the GOP is unable to gain the approval of a majority of youth in blocs that normally identify with them. The only group among which they have a plurality is that of registered GOP voters, among whom they have an approval rating of 49 percent. Other groups with notably high GOP approval ratings include ideological conservatives, with an approval rating of 33 percent, Romney voters in 2012, with an approval rating of 42 percent, and evangelical Christians, with an approval rating of 33 percent; these numbers have dropped by around 10 percentage points since the last election in 2012.
That these groups have comparatively higher approval ratings of the GOP is not particularly surprising; what is surprising is how low these ratings actually are. A party that seeks to nominate a viable presidential candidate in 2016 needs to guarantee at minimum the vote of its own registered voters and of those who voted for its candidate in previous years. The GOP appears currently incapable of doing this. In contrast, while congressional Democratic approval numbers are low at 35 percent across all youth, 70 percent of registered Democratic voters, 57 percent of ideological liberals, and 59 percent of Obama voters approve of the Democrats in Congress.
The good news for the GOP is that youth tend to disapprove of Congress as a whole, instead of singling out either party. If possible, 53 percent of youth would recall and re-elect every single member of Congress today; this includes a slim majority of registered GOP and Democratic voters as well as a much larger number of independents. Similarly, 56 percent of youth blame both Congress and President Obama for the political gridlock present today. The current GOP strategy for the 2014 midterms appears to be riding on this wave of negativity to control the Senate.
This is not a viable strategy for a party looking to keep or take the Senate in 2016 and to win the Presidential election. Republicans need the youth vote generally; and at the very least they need the youth vote of groups such as registered GOP voters that normally vote for them. Many GOP candidates are distancing and will continue to distance themselves from the gridlock in Congress and the Obama administration