Four years after they cast an “historic” ballot for Obama, many young voters have discovered the hard way that the current administration’s economic policies have left them jobless and broke.
Everyone now seems to get their 15 minutes of fame, and Jeremy Epstein had his recently.
Epstein was one of 82 undecided voters selected by the Gallup polling organization to attend Hofstra University’s townhall-style presidential debate. And Epstein, a junior at Adelphi University, had the first question of the night:
President, Governor Romney, as a 20-year-old college student, all I hear from professors, neighbors and others is that when I graduate, I will have little chance to get employment. What can you say to reassure me, but more importantly my parents, that I will be able to sufficiently support myself after I graduate?
That’s the question on most college students’ minds these days. As the Class of 2012 walked the stage earlier this year, the Associated Press reported that “53.6 percent of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in 11 years.” Meanwhile, a survey by Twentysomething, Inc., found that 85 percent of college seniors in 2012 planned to move back into their parents’ homes after graduation—a trend reflected in a December 2011 survey by the Pew Research Center that found that 53 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are living, or have lived, with their parents during the last few years.
That may explain some underreported news in recent polls: At National Review Online, Kristen Soltis Anderson, vice president of the Winston Group, a D.C.-based polling and consulting firm, reports that the Pew Research Center study released Oct. 8 shows that the 34-point margin of victory with the youth vote Obama scored over John McCain in the 2008 presidential election has been halved; he now leads Mitt Romney by only 17 points.
A 17-point deficit may not seem like much reason to celebrate—but when the Obama campaign has expended millions of dollars and untold quantities of manpower trying to attract young voters (as I detailed at National Review Online this summer), this cohort’s sudden chilliness toward the president could have significant Election Day consequences. And it also demonstrates, perhaps more dramatically than any other recent trend, that the president has lost the aura of cool invincibility that appealed to so many four years ago.
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