Republicans are gaining ground among millennial voters on economic issues

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 30 April 2018

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.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

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.