2020 US polls: No millennial bump for Buttigieg, but hints of broad appeal

DES MOINES, Iowa  –  Pete Buttigieg would like to turn the fight for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination into a contest about generational change. But there’s one looming problem: He has yet to win over his own.

His lack of any ample base of support, even among his fellow millennials, is a central challenge of the 37-year-old’s long shot bid to rise from mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to the nation’s highest office. He plays well across a broad spectrum of Democratic voters, but in small fragments that have left him an intriguing candidate stuck in single digits in national polls.

“You can put groups of candidates into corners. What corner do you put Pete Buttigieg in?” said J. Ann Selzer, longtime director of the Iowa Poll, produced by The Des Moines Register and its partners. “I think that the combination of characteristics that most define Buttigieg fit him rather uniquely. He appears to be a cluster of one.”

As such, he needs to try to leverage that kind of appeal into votes against a field where candidates with clearer ideological positions, such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have more natural core constituencies.

There was hope for Buttigeig in a Register poll in June that showed his overall viability footprint — measuring Iowans listing him as their first or second choice, or merely considering him — closely trailed the survey’s top choices: former Vice President Joe Biden, Sanders and Warren.

Biden does better among older voters; Sanders and Warren do better among younger ones. There is no consistent deviation among age groups for Buttigieg, Selzer said.

During Thursday’s presidential debate in Houston, Buttigieg tried to make a virtue of his youth while playing the adult in the room when his rivals bickered on stage.

“This is why presidential debates are becoming unwatchable,” he said after Biden landed a verbal jab during a tense back-and-forth with Julian Castro, housing secretary under President Barack Obama. “This reminds everybody of what they cannot stand about Washington, scoring points against each other, poking at each other.”

Castro shot back: “That’s called the Democratic primary election, Pete. That’s called an election.”

So far, there is no indication that Buttigieg’s next-generation appeal has liftoff. His early summer national buzz, largely the product of his raising a stunning $25 million in the second quarter, gave him plausibility. He enters the autumn stretch to the February caucuses with as robust an Iowa campaign as almost any of his top tier rivals, with more than 100 staff, plans for 20 offices and an aggressive outreach system.

He does so with his sights squarely fixed on capturing that enduring ideal for Democratic primary voters, a next-generation prophet looking deep into the future, like virtually every winning Democratic nominee going back 60 years.

“If you look at the history of successful Democratic nominees, they tend to be younger, they tend to be from outside,” David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama said, referring to Obama and Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. “The question is whether the overhang of Donald Trump creates a different environment where people are risk-averse and reaching for comfort and stability.”

Buttigieg’s debate moment recalled his increasingly pointed criticism of the Washington establishment during his summer blitz through Iowa.

At a town hall-style event in August, he told a 13-year-old girl who was troubled by school shootings that it is “a failure of the generation that’s in charge.”

It’s “one of the reasons I’m not waiting my turn,” the candidate said, drawing applause from the generationally mixed group.

Buttigieg came of age in the mass shooting era and serving in the country’s first post-9/11 war, but there’s no conclusive evidence that he is resonating more with younger voters.

At the same time, Buttigieg doesn’t register the variances in support from different age groups that the older candidates do. A July poll by the Pew Research Center found that just 7% of Democratic primary voters nationally under the age of 30 supported Biden, compared with 41% of voters 65 and older. Sanders, on the other hand, drew 24% of his support from the younger group and just 4% from the older segment.

Advisers say that Buttigieg’s balanced draw from all age groups in the Pew poll echoes their internal findings in early-voting states, and it manifests in Selzer’s most recent poll. It reflects his attractiveness to that enduring bloc of the Democratic presidential electorate that has sought a break from the past.

Still, that polling collectively has yet to show support that would propel him into the upper tier of the 2020 pack.

That’s not to say young adults with children and college students weren’t drawn to the sense of urgency Buttigieg brought to talk of climate change or gun violence out during his summer swing in Iowa, or older voters to his policy understanding and mild temperament.

“It’s not just that he’s younger. It’s his intellect and his vision at a time when the world is looking to new leadership,” Elizabeth Sauer, a retired high school teacher, said at an event with Buttigieg in Cedar Rapids this month. She was referring to younger Western world leaders such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Buttigieg, in an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” said he thinks the perspective he brings “needs to be at the table right now at a time when around the world we’re seeing more and more elected leaders from France to New Zealand to El Salvador coming from my generation.”

There’s been little reliable public polling in Iowa since Buttigieg broke through in July with his $25 million fundraising for the second Quarter. But evidence suggests opportunity for Buttigieg, who had risen to fourth behind the three older candidates in the Register’s June poll.

Since that poll, Buttigieg reported the prodigious level of contributions, sent 100 staffers across Iowa, began spending $350,000 on digital advertising — some aimed at younger voters on the music app Spotify — and undertook an intricate peer-to-peer contact program in Iowa and New Hampshire. /gsg

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Lost generation? 2008 global financial crisis still weighs on Millennials

Marco Saavedra had just graduated from college in 2011 three years after the global financial crisis erupted and just as the Occupy Wall Street movement was picking up steam.

Like many in his generation, Saavedra faced slim pickings for jobs after college, a fate that has left millennials with a wealth gap that economists fear they won’t ever recover.

It has also left them more skeptical about government, worried about the future and more activist.


Saavedra, 28, who is undocumented, joined the Occupy chapter in Ohio, and now works at his family’s restaurant in the Bronx in New York City, where he is active in immigrant rights campaigns.

Laura Banks, 31, never had any interest in demonstrating, but also has bad memories from her early 20s of going to job fairs where there were almost no jobs. Friends lost jobs and her father, an attorney, had trouble finding clients.

“We felt very cornered. We feel like we’re behind,” said Banks, who now works as a project manager for Express Scripts in St. Louis.

She married last year but has doubts about having kids, in part due to fear of another financial crash.

‘Lost generation’?

Saavedra and Banks are part of the millennial generation, which includes people born between 1980 and 1996, now the biggest cohort in the United States, a status that makes marketers salivate.

But the group also is burdened by high student debt loads, that with the scarcity of jobs during the Great Recession has resulted in lengthy post-collegiate sojourns in their parents’ homes and lingering doubts about the future.

The group is at risk of becoming a “lost generation,” the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis warned in a report in May that tracked how the cohort’s wealth accumulation lagged historical norms for people in their 20s and 30s.


Although it spared no generation, the 2008 financial meltdown was more calamitous for young adults because there was no way to recoup the debt they took on for education, cars and credit cards.

“Because none of these types of debt finance assets that have appreciated rapidly during the last few years — such as stocks and real estate — they received no leveraged wealth boost like that enjoyed by the older cohorts,” the report said.

Crushing student debt was among the rallying cries of Occupy Wall Street, a movement led largely by young adults who blamed the crisis on corporate greed and a rigged system that benefited the “one percent” at the expense of everyone else.

The group gained its greatest visibility during the almost-two month occupation of Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan before police evicted activists and removed tents in November 2011.

Although much more low profile today, Occupy Wall Street still has a presence on Twitter, where it touts progressive environmental policies, criticizes gentrification and lambasts President Donald Trump over immigration and other issues.

Iffy on capitalism? 

But the movement and the crisis have had long-lasting impacts on the millennials’ outlook.

An April 2016 poll released by Harvard University Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics showed that just 41 percent of 18 to 29-year olds supported capitalism, higher than the 33 percent that supported socialism, but a low enough number to turn heads.

John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Kennedy School, said millennials remember how the crisis harmed their parents and others who played by the rules.


Della Volpe senses broad support among young adults for “compassionate capitalism” to address glaring problems including gross inequality and a compromised campaign finance systems.

“I think they have a different definition of the American dream, which is less around economics and more around flexibility and happiness,” he said.

Major political parties have largely failed to ignite millennial interest, with two exceptions, Barack Obama’s successful 2008 campaign and the 2016 campaign of Bernie Sanders, the white-haired Socialist who gave Hillary Clinton an unexpectedly tough battle for the Democratic nomination.

Support for Trump is somewhat lower among millennials compared to the broader US population, but some of the same trends hold, Della Volpe said. For example, Trump polls best among white millennials without a college degree, mirroring the broader US trend.

Democratic socialists scored an unexpected victory in New York in late June, when 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Sanders supporter, unseated 10-term Democratic Rep. Joseph Crowley, in the Bronx in New York City.

Ocasio-Cortez told The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah that she favored greater taxes on the wealthy and livable wages for workers as part of a “moral and ethical economy.”

“Us as millennials, we came of age during a time when 9/11 happened in middle school, the financial crisis happened in college,” she said. “We have never really known or grown up in a time of economic prosperity.”

Saavedra helped organize an event for Ocasio-Cortez at his parent’s restaurant in the South Bronx, La Morada, which is not far from her congressional district.

The restaurant is staffed with undocumented workers and proclaims its solidarity with its immigrant-rich neighborhood with a “Resiste” (“Resist!”) sign on the exterior.

The family was able to rent the space in 2009 due to vacancies amid the crisis — one positive from that period, Saavedra said.

While he may never be able to vote, he plans to remain politically active.

“If there’s anything that my organizing has taught me it’s that there’s a lot of other ways to petition and to march and to rally that make political change, even if it’s not in a tangible vote.”

Fears for the future 

Banks, meanwhile, have low expectations for government, especially after the 2016 presidential campaign between Trump and Clinton, which she called “the most toxic, hateful thing I’ve ever seen.”

And she took away lessons from the crisis on personal finance. She was shocked when she and her husband received approval for a mortgage of four times the amount they wanted, but they rejected the sum.

“When the housing market crashed, what I saw was a lot of Americans living beyond their means and a lot of banks acting irresponsibly,” Banks said.

“I’m really scared to have kids,” she added. “I’m afraid the market will collapse again in the next couple of years.”   /vvp

source: business.inquirer.net

Tinder survey bares naked truths about millennial dating

A fresh survey from one of the most popular dating apps on the planet has revealed some naked truths about the dating habits of the millennial set, by comparing experiences between online and offline daters.

The poll, which captured responses from over 9,000 men and women from the United States, compared and contrasted dating-related habits on and offline, and suggests there are some key differentiators around fidelity, communication, perception and mindfulness.

For example, according to the survey results, online daters are more faithful to their mates, with 93 percent of online daters reportedly noting “fidelity” as important in a relationship as opposed to offline daters (90 percent).

Opposing political views are also more of a “deal breaker” for online daters than those who date offline, according to the figures, with nearly 23 percent (or one in four) of Tinder users admitting that differing political ideologies would be their number-one reason to refuse a potential partner (via WWD).

For Tinder users, age and education were also voted the top two most important factors, with appearance ranking third when considering a potential date. The full report is available on Modern Dating Myths’ official website. JB

source: technology.inquirer.net