Ambivalence toward Clinton could throw election to Trump; Poll Suggests BREXIT Parallels
New Poll shows importance of knowing how and where to connect with Millennials in 2016 Presidential Election
30% of Millennials Undecided
London, UK, New Haven, Conn.: July 25, 2016 – A new MobOpinions/VoterLabs national mobile in-app poll finds millennials will play a pivotal role in the 2016 Presidential election.
The national survey of those born between 1981 and 1998 shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump with millennials by 34% to 25% and among likely voting millennials 38% to 28%.
However, with 32.5% of all millennials and 23% of those identified as likely voters still undecided, ambivalence toward Mrs. Clinton could pave the way for a Trump victory if this group decides to stay home or turn to a 3rd party candidate.
Of likely voting millennials, 23% do not identify with a major party. Of those that do, 20% of self-identified Democrats see themselves as conservative, and 20% of those calling themselves Republicans consider themselves liberal, suggesting this group does not fit neatly into the traditional party narratives of presidential contests.
“This election may very well hinge on millennials.” Said Walter Kawecki, a partner at data and analytics firm VoterLabs. “Persuasion and turnout will all come down to delivering the right message through the medium.”
When asked to pick just one social media app to have from a list of the most popular smartphone apps, 35% of likely voting millennials chose Facebook, followed by Instagram with 18% ,Snapchat at 17%, and Twitter at 9%.
When segmented by age group though, Instagram and Snapchat lead the way, with Instagram the choice of 26% of 18-20 year olds, followed by Snapchat with 22% and Facebook with 18%. Broken down further by gender, among likely female voters, Snapchat wins 18-20 year olds with 37%, and shares top honors with Facebook in the 21-24 range, each with 32%.
And for all the attention on Mr. Trump’s Twitter following, the numbers shows he’ll have a tough time reaching millennials there, the microblogging service coming in 4th with millennials.
“Clearly Facebook is still dominant, but effective use of Snapchat and Instagram could be pivotal.” added Kawecki. “If so, the Trump campaign could have a secret weapon in Ivanka Trump.”
With Sec. Clinton’s unique circumstance of having a former President as her spouse, and Donald Trump emphasizing daughter Ivanka’s “good looks and smarts”, family surrogates are being used to connect with important demographics – white working class voters for Mr. Clinton, and for Ms. Trump, millennials and women.
Interestingly, though 21% of Trump supporters said Bill Clinton should play a very active role if Hillary Clinton is elected, while only 14% of them said Ivanka Trump should be very active if Mr. Trump is elected.
“Bill Clinton can be instrumental in bringing undecided and “soft” Trump Millennial supporters to vote for his wife Hillary.” commented Mitchell Barak, a well known pollster who has polled in 160 countries, and is a co-founder of MobOpinions .
While both candidates showed very high unfavorability, Sec. Clinton’s favorability spread of -12.5% to Mr. Trump’s -41.3%, the Clinton/Trump favorability spread of +13.28%, and Clinton/Trump unfavorability spread of -15.5%, in favor of Sec. Clinton, suggest millennials are Clinton’s to lose.
Mitchell Barak, see clear parallels to the BREXIT vote, “When we polled millennials in the UK ahead of the BREXIT vote, the results indicated that, if millennials had turned out, REMAIN would have won. This survey shows a similar pattern – unless Hillary Clinton can persuade and turnout millennials, Mr. Trump stands a very good chance of being the next U.S. President.”
The survey was conducted on iOS and Android devices in-app within 117 different mobile applications, leveraging MOBOPINIONS network of respondents and proprietary technology. The sample consisted of 941 Millennials from across the United States with a 2.68% margin of error, and was conducted just prior to the two weeks of Republican and Democratic National Conventions.
VoterLabs’ data engine and voter scoring methodology, powered by VoterLabs’ patented technology, were used to identify those most likely to vote among the survey respondents.
An additional survey will be conducted at the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention to compare the effects of the conventions.
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MOBOPINIONS mobile survey research platform reaches over 100 million monthly respondents across the United States, through thousands of apps on smartphones & tablets. The proprietary platform enables survey researchers and brands to gain opinions and insight from mobile audiences using the apps data to gather location, demographics and device specific information, including the Device Ad ID, which has been used with Facebook, Google and other digital advertiser to reach users displaying similar behavioural attributes.
VoterLabs, Inc. works with political organizations, businesses and enterprise clients to better understand supporters, customers and audiences by realizing the full potential of data enrichment and analytics. Customers have included political organizations at all levels, including the 2016 presidential. Products and services include VoterLabs Text-to-Donate with Mobile ID Sync, TargetMatch self-service data enrichment, and data modeling, analysis and microtargeting.