Super Tuesday voting concluded only a few hours ago, but political archeologists are already turning over the rubble. An early narrative focuses on the failure of young voters to turn out. According to the exit polls, youth turnout did not increase in a single Super Tuesday state. In fact, the profile of the electorate skewed much older than in recent primary elections. German Lopez of Vox explains:
Consider Texas: According to NBC News’s exit polls, the Democratic electorate actually skewed older in Tuesday’s primary compared to past primaries. In 2008 and 2016, 13 and 18 percent of the electorate, respectively, was 65 and older. In 2020, it was 24 percent.
Texas is getting older, but not at a rapid enough rate for that increase to be tied solely to state demographic trends. In fact, the share of the population that’s 65 and older is just 12.6 percent. Given Biden’s strength with this group of Texas voters — 46 percent support Biden, while just 16 percent support Sanders — that surge in older voters helps explain Biden’s narrow victory in the state.
Many commentators are questioning how Bernie Sanders expects to sell people on his revolution if he can’t even mobilize the kids to cast their votes. It’s a reasonable question, but Sanders did at least accomplish half of his goal. For example, among California voters age 18-29, Sanders beat Biden by a staggering 72 percent to 5 percent. In Texas, the margin was 65 percent to 11 percent.
So, Sanders really does have the overwhelming support of young voters and it’s undeniable that he’s produced some excitement among them, but somewhere this formula broke down. To get a clue of what happened, we might want to look at Virginia.
Turnout in Virginia’s Democratic primary surged to more than 1.3 million voters, from about 783,000 in 2016 and 986,000 in 2008. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who won the state decisively, said Tuesday night that “the turnout turned out for us” in Virginia, and “there is some evidence he is correct,” The Washington Post reports. “Of the voters who sat out the 2016 primary and cast ballots in 2020, Biden won nearly 60 percent, according to a Washington Post statistical model.”
The surge in turnout was fueled in suburban areas, particularly in Northern Virginia. It looks like suburbanites were chomping at the bit to race to the polls. When they got there, they opted for Biden, and this swamped Sanders’s advantage with young voters. It also drove down young voters as a percentage of the electorate, making them appear apathetic.
But if they were apathetic by comparison to their parents and grandparents, they were also emphatic that they want more change than Biden is promising. What else can you say when only 1 in 20 Californians under 30 voted for the former vice president? I think there are some major warning signs in that number. The youth vote is one of the Democratic Party’s strongest demographics, and that means every slight uptick in their participation pays off in a major way.
Biden showed that the suburban strategy can dominate in Democratic primaries, but he’s going to need young voters to both support him in November and to turn out in big numbers. There’s nothing in the exit polls from Super Tuesday to suggest that he’s on track in this respect. If even Sanders struggles to get them to vote at their punching weight, what hope will Biden have?
There’s a lot of piling on of Sanders and mockery of his promise of revolution, but youth turnout is now a clear challenge that must be solved. Sanders’ supporters have a point when they warn against ignoring the strong consensus of people under 30, as they represent the future of the country. I expect them to emphasize this point in the next phase of the campaign.
Having said that, Biden just annihilated Sanders even while being slaughtered with the youth vote, and Sanders clearly didn’t deliver on his effort to reshape the electorate in his favor. Anyone who preferred Biden because they want the Democrats to protect and expand their suburban-based House majority was completely vindicated.
What the Democrats need is to pull these two parts of the party together, and that’s something Sanders will never be able to do. If Biden can’t win over more young voters, the convention might want to find a third option.
It’s pretty clear Biden can’t. I guess it could be media narrative but when was the last time he had a positive interaction with a voter under 30? I see a lot of condescending language at the least (i.e. use of the word “child”) and lack of acknowledgement that youth concerns are real concerns. That while Biden may have had to deal with the threat of nuclear annihilation, modern youth have to deal with climate change and fascism. Which Biden decidedly did not have to growing up.
I’d love to see the internal polling of the ‘youth’ support of other candidates. At a brokered convention, where the intent is to pull in the youth vote but not hand the candidacy to Sanders, the choice of alternative to Uncle Joe would be??? Or could the problem be solved with the vice presidential choice, accompanied by the implicit or explicit assumption that Biden would only serve one term?
VP choice could be crucial, but currently appears it might be Klobuchar, and I don’t think she’ll bring in the under 30s. Who might you suggest?
Well, the only young’en around is Pete. I can see dramatic plusses and minuses running him as vice, but it would be a very bold play for the youth vote.
Let me add that at 71, I’m *so* tired of old men running for the top of the party. I hope I live long enough to see a vigorous young person take the presidential helm.
“Sanders clearly didn’t deliver on his effort to reshape the electorate in his favor.” Sanders underperformed, largely owing to the last-minute shenanigans of Klobuchar and Buttigieg. So in that sense he didn’t deliver; but he came pretty close, so let’s not equate that with failing to reshape the Democratic electorate. Reshaping the electorate is a herculean task, and considering Sanders has been at it not even four years, he’s doing it, as you point out. It’s an ongoing process. I would quibble with just two of your points. The majority-Sanders cohort is not just under 30, it’s under 40; it is much more diverse than it has usually been portrayed, and I think he’s done better than any candidate ever in getting out the under-40 Hispanic vote.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-cautionary-look-at-bidens-victories-and-sanders-losses
I’ve learned not to try to post more than one link per comment, but here’s another one I want to share:
https://prospect.org/politics/biden-notwithstanding-its-biden-super-tuesday-democratic-presidential-primary/
I think you make a very good point, Martin. There’s no one truly transformational in the field because it’s hard for young people to get excited about geriatrics like Sanders, Biden and Warren while the others were running as moderates. I’ve been wondering if Buttigieg’s mistake wasn’t running away from the initial excitement he generated as a transformational candidate. In doing so he unmasked himself to the young as merely another opportunistic politician. I don’t think he can recover his former promise.
Unfortunately there’s no one with Obama’s charisma and 2008 sheen. At least if there is, I’m not sure who. My hope is the stark choice between Trump and whomever our nominee ultimately proves to be is enough to drive huge turnout. I believe it will among women and minorities. Would be great if the youth chose to participate. But that’s always been a weakness. I think we can probably get there without them but we’ll need them if we want to sweep a bunch of Democrats into down ballot offices.
I think this is another effect of the democratic leadership in congress hanging on like grim death. Promote purely on merit without regard to age or seniority. This isn’t the only issue (dem state wipeouts obviously during Obama years) but its one of them.
Also worth comparing percentage of 18-29 year old voters who voted for Sanders in 2016 versus 2020 would be helpful. I’ll share a link to an article that suggests that some of Sanders’ support from this important group of voters declined between 2016 and 2020, depending on the state. Where Sanders lost youth support, who were they choosing to support? That would be helpful information. So yeah, Super Tuesday is a bit good-news/bad news. Agree that Biden is really going to have to step up his efforts to reach out to younger voters, and I’m guessing it’ll be a full-time effort to get him up to speed. Obviously if Sanders ends up with the nom, we have a whole different set of problems, but that can wait for another post.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/03/04/super-tuesday-bernie-sanders-youth-votes-fell-short-compared-2016/4947795002/?fbclid=IwAR1NXcCyHHE5Gx2zwFdj-EMIAj4K1e6PNc9urGr4H3KlyjzRzNrZDIY_kbE
Is this not a natural result of the failed revolution? Since every politician except Bernie has been corrupted by special interest money and government operates in the interest of the corporate rather than the people, what should I do when Bernie loses?
I thank my corporate overlords for letting me have so many neat toys, diversions and entertainment and ignore politics forever more. They are all a bunch of crooks anyway. Who cares? It does not make any real difference to me. I think we should live in a fairer society, but I’m doing just fine. I can live a very happy life without paying any attention whatsoever to politics or the news.
Bernie is right about everything except the idea he – or anybody else- can do anything about it.
“I can live a very happy life without paying any attention whatsoever to politics or the news.”
Sure you can, until you can’t. The deprivations of the corporate/oligarchy class won’t stop where they are now. Once they’ve plucked every last bit of public wealth the poor and working class are dependent on, do you really think they’ll stop there? Unless you are independently wealthy, e.g. one of them, they will eventually come for yours, because their game is greed, its never enough, and as long as there is something to be plundered, it will be. Eventually they will come for you, and as Martin Niemoller said in his famous poem:
“Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
We can’t give up if we really want things to change, change may or may not come via the things we are doing now, but it certainly won’t come if we give up and do nothing.
First, understand that I reject the Sander’s predicate via a vis corruption. If I did accept it, I would give up. There is no point in merely substituting one set of corrupt politicians for another. Either way our corporate overlords get whatever they want.
And I think you missed the point of Brave New World. The corporate overlords are smart enough to keep us happy by making sure we have access to food, drugs, shiny new toys and entertainment. In 1984, the population is kept in check with fear. In Brave New World, we are slaves, but we are slaves to the things we love. As long as there is McDonalds, the NFL, and nifty new video games every year, there will be no revolution.
People do not risk upsetting the applecart unless they have nothing left to lose. And our political masters are smart enough to make sure that most of us have too much to lose to risk radical change. That is the only limit to their greed.