To voters under 30, Bernie Sanders is one of them.
Forget Hillary Clinton. “She’s a corporate sellout,” said Emmy Ham, a senior international affairs and anthropology major at the University of New Hampshire.
And forget the notion that young women are eager to see Clinton president because of her gender. “There will be other opportunities for me to vote for a woman for president,” Ham said.
Sanders has surged among young people as few candidates have since the U.S. senator from Vermont was a college student in the turbulent 1960s. Sanders, 74, topped Clinton 84-14 among Democrats 29 and younger in Iowa’s Monday caucus. He’s got a 3-1 lead among those aged 18-29 in the latest NBCNews/WSJ-Marist New Hampshire poll.
Sanders has two important traits common to younger voters: He’s new and he won’t compromise his ideals.
Young voters see Clinton as part of another era. She’s been in the national spotlight 24 years, before most young people were born. “She’s been there their entire life, and she’s yesterday’s news,” said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. “But no one knew who Bernie Sanders was until recently.” |