Republicans are gaining ground among millennial voters on economic issues


Democrats are losing support among millennial voters, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Monday, with the 2018 midterm elections half a year away. Only 46 percent of voters aged 18 to 34 now say they prefer a Democrat over a Republican for Congress, down from 55 percent this time in 2016. Among white millennials specifically, just 39 percent prefer a Democratic candidate.
The Republican Party has not seen a wide influx of youth support — a mere 28 percent of respondents said they intend to vote GOP, an increase of a single point since 2016 — but millennials tend to lack strong party identification and are increasingly favorable to Republican economic policies, Reuters reports. They are now almost evenly divided as to which party "has a better plan for the economy." In 2016, Democrats' economic agenda was favored by a 12-point margin.
"It sounds strange to me to say this about the Republicans, but they're helping with even the small things," said Terry Hood, 34, a Louisiana voter who backed Hillary Clinton in 2016. "They're taking less taxes out of my paycheck. I notice that."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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