Clinton and Trump need every vote they can get in the battleground of Nevada. But young people in Reno say they’re not convinced by either one

Alicia Giles is a poster child for Hillary Clinton’s plan to help college students graduate debt-free. She is also exhibit A for Donald Trump’s outreach to a pinched and worried working class left behind by the economic recovery. For both, she represents headache and opportunity.

What first-time voters think of the 2016 election – in pictures Read more

Giles is 19 years old. She registered to vote the day she got her driver’s license, 13 May 2016, about a month before graduating from North Valleys high school. She works two full-time jobs so she can afford to go to college next year.

So what does this nonpartisan Reno resident – a Pizza Hut assistant manager who hates pizza, a JC Penney sales clerk who wants to be a lawyer, a young millennial who works 90 hours a week – plan to do on election day?

Nothing.



“I don’t like this election,” said Giles, decked out in a football jersey and headed for the bleachers to watch the North Valleys Panthers take on the Galena Grizzlies. “It’s super crazy. I don’t want to be part of it. I don’t like anything about it. I don’t like either candidate.”

I don't like this election ... I don't want to be a part of it. I don't like either candidate Alicia Giles

This election year, millennials like Giles have surpassed baby boomers as the largest living generation; there are almost as many eligible voters among the 18-to-35 set as there are among 52-to-70-year-olds. But they are less likely to vote than their dutiful parents and grandparents, and they are even less likely to identify with a political party.

Nevada is a case in point – and a battleground state where Clinton and Trump are neck-and-neck and need every voter they can persuade. The Guardian spoke with dozens of young voters in Reno, people who could affect politics for decades but whose first foray into a presidential race features the most disliked candidates in history and some of the nastiest rhetoric ever spewed in an election.

Only 5% of eligible young citizens in Nevada took part in the 2008 and 2016 caucuses, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement.

That’s the lowest participation rate by youth voters nationwide.

A whole 28% of millennials who are registered to vote in Nevada declared themselves nonpartisan as of August, according to the secretary of state’s office. That’s double the percentage of nonpartisan voters older than 55 and significantly more than the state as a whole, which weighed in at 20%.

Tyler Gentry, who manages the North Valleys football team, will turn 18 on 1 November. He’s a guard on the basketball team, runs relays, wants to go to a military academy, be an officer in the air force. He’s a wing commander in North Valleys’ junior ROTC.

He has until 18 October to register, and he is torn. He’s still trying to figure out “which candidate is the better for the country”, he said, as the Panthers and Grizzlies left the field at halftime, with Galena ahead, 14-10. “I don’t want to not vote. Then I don’t have the right to talk.”

If Gentry registers, it will probably be as a Democrat. He likes the party’s foreign and economic policies, but he parts company on gun control. The Democrats are for it; he is not. Top of mind for this serious son of a retired police officer is just how dysfunctional US politics are these days, a time when the Republican nominee derides women as “disgusting” and “animals” and the Democrat slams a swath of GOP voters as “a basket of deplorables”.

“It’s kind of a hectic time, scary,” Gentry said. “I feel like I missed out my first time with more decent candidates.” He would like to see a race that resembled “a Kennedy-Nixon debate, more classic, well-rounded candidates” than those running this time around.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sierra McConnell speaks during political science professor Fred Lokken’s class at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno. Photograph: David Calvert/The Guardian

For the past 25 years, the political scientist Fred Lokken has had a front-row seat for young Nevadans’ voter ennui. He teaches political science 101 at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno. This semester he is teaching five sections of the politics class, which is a general education requirement.

That means 200 students between 16 and about 60, with an average age of 23. He would be surprised, he said, if 40 of them actually voted in November. Because nobody at any age votes much in Nevada, which is usually in the bottom 10 states for voter turnout.

“Nevada has been one of the fastest-growing states,” Lokken said en route to class one recent Thursday. “No one is from here. Voter registration disappears in those moves. It’s not a priority. There are new politicians, new players. Sometimes people don’t know where or how to register.”

Other factors depressing turnout? Nevada, he said, was “in the cynical part of the country where people don’t trust government”. More than a third of residents between 18 and 24 are Hispanic, “a population that may be either undocumented or unengaged”. And high school graduation rates are among the lowest in the country.

“The ones who don’t graduate,” Lokken said, “are even less likely to vote.”

Nevada has among the highest percentages nationwide of Hispanics registered to vote: 24% of the electorate is of Hispanic origin, according to the US census bureau. There is little hard data here on whether Trump’s anti-immigration stance has caused an uptick in Hispanic registration. But a recent survey by Latino Decisions shows that young Hispanics in Nevada are deeply interested in casting a ballot in 2016. A total of 87% of Hispanics younger than 39 who were polled said they would most likely vote, with immigration reform their top issue.

It is 12.30pm, and students in Lokken’s second class of the day is milling in the hallway of the Red Mountain building, waiting for their professor to unlock room 412. Two weeks earlier, Hillary Clinton was in the same building, rebuking Trump for “taking hate groups mainstream”.



Her appearance on campus was a testament to the importance of Washoe County – the “swingiest” county in a critical swing state. What that means is the number of registered Democrats and Republicans is relatively equal, and, come election day, anything could happen.

For 30-some students ranging in age from 17 to 33, Lokken’s class was angry and cynical. The nine students who said they would not cast ballots will stay away from the voting booth because the choice of candidates is just so awful. Those who say they will vote agreed with the assessment.

“On the one hand, you’ve got someone who’s lying,” mourned Ilana Barry, 18, who will not vote. “On the other is someone who’s probably going to destroy the country. They’re both lying. They’re both going to destroy the country.”

On the one hand, you’ve got someone who’s lying ... On the other is someone who’s probably going to destroy the country

Jaiden Bornt, 18, plans to cast her ballot for Clinton despite the lack of truthfulness in campaign 2016. “Hillary likes to draw attention away from herself when she lies,” Bornt said. “Donald Trump likes to draw attention to himself when he lies.”

Said Trump supporter Christopher Osgood, 21: “This is a crazy election, a joke ... They both lie. I don’t like Hillary’s lies.”

A few things were clear throughout Lokken’s classes, with about 70 students total that day: both candidates are deeply unpopular. When asked who likes Clinton, just one student raised a hand. Fifteen said they like Trump. Not a single person thought it was important that the US could elect a female president for the first time in its 240-year history.

And insults are no way to woo millennial voters. Give them something to believe in or go away.

“People are desperate,” said Michael Des Roches, 27. “They see the candidates for who they are, reaching the bottom of the barrel ... Through social media, both sides jab at each other. Hillary’s e-mail. Trump’s wall.

“It’s a boxing match,” added the registered Republican, who plans to vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. “People see through that. It’s a bunch of baloney.”

Tuesday is National Voter Registration day. To find out how to register in your state, click here.