Most of that shift in turnout is among Black voters. In these surveys, the Black share of likely voters among millennials eligible to vote in 2012 fell to 10 percent from 14 percent between 2012 and 2020. This would have reduced Mr. Obama’s support among millennials by about 1.5 points. The effect is more muted for Mr. Biden since he won Black voters by a smaller margin than Mr. Obama did.
Is it just about Obama?
Mr. Obama didn’t just benefit from a strong turnout, of course. He was beloved by younger voters in a way that was absolutely not the case for Mr. Biden. Is it possible that the only thing that’s changed over the last decade is that Democrats went from nominating someone beloved by young people to someone with relative strength among older Americans?
Yes, that’s a possibility. With this data, it’s hard to know whether the Democrats’ showing with younger voters reflects a strength that was unsustainable or a growing underlying weakness. It’s also not possible to untangle the effect of the Republicans’ nomination of Mr. Trump compared with Mitt Romney.
But there’s one other opportunity for benchmarking shifts among millennials: John Kerry in 2004. According to this data, Mr. Kerry won 57 percent of those oldest millennials who were eligible to vote in that election, then ages 18 to 23. Mr. Obama then won that cohort with 61 percent in 2012, a clear improvement, but not quite a sign of truly special appeal. By 2020, Mr. Biden won just 54 percent of these once-young voters.
Is it just your data?
The figures from the last newsletter come close to the average among the various election studies with data back to 2008 or 2012: the American National Election Study, the Cooperative Election Study and the Catalist estimates.
It’s a little hard to make a simple, exact comparison between the data I’ve used and the other election studies, because the other sources don’t always offer the same age categories. But the simplest way is by looking at the categories they do have in common: those 18 to 29 in 2012, and 30 to 44 in 2020. No, they’re not the same groups of people. In fact, nearly half of the 30-to-44 group in 2020 was already older than those 18 to 29 in 2012.
But on average, the studies show nearly the same findings. The other studies show Mr. Obama winning 62 percent of those 18 to 29 in 2012, while Mr. Biden won 56 percent of those 30 to 44 in 2020. In our recent newsletter, we showed 63 percent for Mr. Obama and 56 percent for Mr. Biden for their respective groups. And the various more detailed cuts — when available — continue to show close similarity. This suggests they would probably also show similar findings for the more exact age cohorts in question.
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