The Democratic candidate’s challenge with millennials is not Trump – it’s Sanders supporters who would either pick a third-party candidate or not vote

Hillary Clinton needs millennials, and her best hope at winning them over might be the septuagenarian they tried to elect.

Bernie Sanders, the beloved leader of the nation’s leftwing movement, appeared alongside his former rival at a university gymnasium in New Hampshire on Wednesday and issued an urgent appeal to disillusioned young voters: “It is imperative that we elect Hillary Clinton.”



Millennials have long eluded Clinton, who lost the youth vote in the primaries to Sanders by blowout margins. Even though many of his supporters have migrated to Clinton’s campaign, polls show she is still well below Barack Obama’s share of millennials in 2012 despite their disdain for her opponent, Donald Trump.

Michael Giordano will be one of the youngest voters to cast a ballot this election, but he hasn’t made up his mind about who he will vote for.

The high school senior, who turns 18 this week, attended the event about college affordability in New Hampshire to see Sanders, who he had hoped to vote for in November. Giordano said he is “very concerned” by the prospect of a Trump presidency but is wary of Clinton.

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“I feel like at first there was more of an emotional block for me, that she didn’t seem as passionate and seemed more rehearsed,” said Giordano. “But in the debate, I think to counteract Donald Trump she showed herself to be more relatable.”

Giordano said he is inching toward Clinton but hasn’t ruled out a third-party vote. He is nonetheless mindful of the candidate he doesn’t want to see become president.

Paradoxically, millennials are a group she should do well with. The giant voting bloc now estimated to number nearly 70 million are the most diverse generation in American history. They tend to be more progressive, inclusive and share remarkably similar views about the Republican nominee. Nearly 75% of millennials believe Trump is racist and 71% say they would be “ashamed” of their country if he was elected, according to a battleground state survey of millennials for NextGen Climate, a liberal group run by Clinton supporter Tom Steyer.

There’s little danger that Clinton will lose millennials to Trump, who trails in this age group by double digits. Her real challenge is to keep disaffected young people from leaving the Democratic party or staying home on 8 November.

“In a tight race like this one is shaping up to be,” said Andrew Baumann, a Democratic pollster the senior vice-president of Global Strategy Group, which conducted the survey. “The difference between Clinton winning 50%, 55% and 60% could be the difference between her winning the election or not.”

Millennials largely identify as independents Millennials largely identify as independents

In a race between Clinton and Trump, nearly a quarter of millennials said they would not vote for president and in a race between all four candidates, 17% said they would vote for a third-party candidate, according to the millennial survey.

That a large swath of millennials find Clinton, who would be the nation’s first female president, “uninspiring” is partly Sanders’ fault, Baumann said.



“For many of these young voters, their introduction to Hillary Clinton has been through the prism of Bernie Sanders, and that wasn’t exactly a very positive one,” he said.

During the primary, the Vermont senator painted Clinton as a fixture of the very political establishment his revolution promised to overthrow. He hammered her over the richly paid speeches she made in front of big banks, which fueled a narrative among his supporters that she is “bought and paid for” by Wall Street.

But now, as the star of the progressive movement goes to bat for Clinton, that image has, for some, begun to fade.



“We’ve seen Secretary Clinton start to adopt the messaging of Bernie Sanders,” said Ben O’Keefe, 22, of MoveOn.org, a progressive group that backed Sanders in the primary. “That’s not a coincidence and that’s not something we should ever fault her for. She’s listening to us. That’s what we should want in a presidential candidate.”

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“Trump’s candidacy is built on the idea that he can run up the score with groups like older voters, so Clinton needs to be able to rely on a cushion among groups like millennials,” said Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and author of The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials are Leading America.



“If millennials don’t find her to be adequately inspiring, there’s a chance that many of them decide to wash their hands of this whole election.”

Millennials are such a large voting bloc that increasing their support by 10 points could theoretically double her two-point lead against Trump in national polls, said Ben Tulchin, the pollster for Sanders’ campaign. The margin could be enough to cushion her in battleground states like North Carolina, Nevada and Colorado.



“It’s not reasonable to expect her to replicate his success with millennials but she doesn’t have to,” said Tulchin. “She just has to make progress with them.”

Tulchin said people they encountered truly cared about the issues, in particular: climate change, wage inequality, criminal justice reform and college affordability. He said Clinton’s campaign missed an opportunity to highlight the college affordability plan she and Sanders crafted. But, he said, Wednesday’s joint campaign event, which followed weeks of efforts designed to reach millennials, is a step in the right direction.

“If she can make the case convincingly that she’s progressive and shares their values, Bernie will vouch for her,” he said.

Additional reporting by Sabrina Siddiqui in Durham, New Hampshire