Huh. A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 16,000 American voters between the ages of 18 and 34 just found that among millennials, "enthusiasm for the Democratic Party is waning" and millennials "increasingly say the Republican Party is a better steward of the economy."
How'd that happen?
The poll doesn't say, exactly, but it suggests a significant shift has occurred among millennials since 2016, when the same poll asked them whether they'd be supporting a Democrat or a Republican in their local Congressional races.
If this poll is right—and as Trump likes to remind everyone all the time, polls have been very wrong on the big stuff before—but if this poll is right, then over the last two years there's been a nine-point drop in the percentage of millennials who say they'll be voting for a Democrat for Congress.
"That presents a potential problem for Democrats who have come to count on millennials as a core constituency—and will need all the loyalty they can get to achieve a net gain of 23 seats to capture control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November," Reuters reports.
Interestingly, outright support for Republicans doesn't seem to have increased much among millennials overall, according to the poll.
In 2016, that support sat at around 28 percent. This year, it's still at around 28 percent.
Instead, what appears to be happening is that a large number of millennials are now saying they're either "undecided" heading into the midterms (and are considering voting Republican or maybe for a third party), or are just going to join the ranks of America's nonvoters and sit this one out.
Also, if this poll is to be believed, then something particularly significant is happening among white male millennials—who, unlike millennials as a whole, seem to know exactly who they're ditching the Democrats for: Republicans.
"The shift was especially dramatic among young white men, who two years ago favored Democrats but now say they favor Republicans over Democrats by a margin of 46 to 37 percent," Reuters reports.
As we talked about on this week's Blabbermouth, young white men are proving very susceptible to the messages being peddled by the right amid the so-called "crisis in masculinity." On this week's show, Rich Smith offers his pitch to "the lost boys of the internet" on how to become a better kind of man. Perhaps he'll have some takers. But whatever the Democratic Party's pitching to these particular voters right now, a lot of them aren't biting.
