In need of millennial votes, Hillary Clinton will campaign with Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire this week
Under-performing among millennial voters, Hillary Clinton is set to campaign in New Hampshire this week with an individual quite popular among the youths: former Democratic primary opponent and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
According to the Clinton campaign, the former rivals-turned-partners will appear together at an afternoon rally Wednesday at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The rally is set to begin at 2:15 p.m. at UNH’s Field House—less than 48 hours after the first presidential debate—with doors opening at 12:15 p.m.
Among other things, Clinton and Sanders will discuss college affordability, according to the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign.
“That includes enabling all students with family income up to $125,000 to attend an in-state public college or university tuition-free, covering more than 80 percent of all families,” the campaign said in a release, referring to Clinton’s partial adoption of one of Sanders’s main platform proposals.
The rally comes as recent polls show Clinton losing support among younger voters both nationally and in some swing states, even though she still leads Republican nominee Donald Trump within the demographic.
As Mother Jones reported last week, Clinton’s lead among millennials is far less than the margin President Barack Obama carried in 2012:
Obama won voters between the ages of 18 and 29 by a 23-point margin over Mitt Romney. Clinton is performing far worse among millennials in recent polls, thanks largely to the outsize support that third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are drawing from that demographic.
In a Quinnipiac poll from last week, when Stein and Johnson were included, Clinton received just 31 percent support from likely voters 18-34. Johnson came in second with 29 percent, while Trump garnered 26 percent and Stein 15 percent. When Stein and Johnson weren’t offered as options, that age cohort sided with Clinton over Trump by a 55-34 margin.
The Washington Post notes that Clinton’s relative struggles to win support from millennial voters are nothing new. Last week, she wrote an op-ed specifically targeted toward said generation of voters.
Maybe Sanders can help.
After an at-times bitter primary race, the Vermont senator officially endorsed Clinton at a rally together in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in July. Additionally, a Harvard poll last spring showed that Sanders, whose general favorability remains high, was profoundly popular among 18- to 29-year-olds.
Sanders has appeared at solo events campaigning on Clinton’s behalf, including recently in Ohio. But the rally Wednesdy will be their first dual-appearance since their Portsmouth rally.
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