Tag Archives: Millennials

Negative tone of White House race sours young voters

Millenials see President Obama speak

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) – The exceptionally negative tone of this year’s race for the White House is souring young Americans, turning some away from the democratic process just as the millennial generation has become as large a potential bloc of voters as the baby boomers.

Reuters/Ipsos polling shows that Americans aged 18 to 34 are slightly less likely to vote for president this year than their comparably aged peers were in 2012. Some political scientists worry that this election could scar a generation of voters, making them less likely to cast ballots in the future.

Young Americans on the left and right have found reasons to be dissatisfied with their choices this year. Senator Bernie Sanders had an enthusiastic following of younger people before he lost the Democratic primary race to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On the Republican side, some are unwilling to vote for Donald Trump, citing the New York businessman’s sometimes insulting rhetoric on women, minorities and immigrants.

Brandon Epstein, who turned 18 on Monday, had looked forward earlier in the year to casting his first vote for Sanders. Now, the resident of suburban Suffolk County, New York, plans to sit out the vote on Election Day, Nov. 8.

“It’s because of the selection of the candidates. I find them to be not just sub-par, but unusually sub-par,” said Epstein, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Something’s gone terribly wrong.”

That sentiment is broadly reflected in poll data that show that young Americans are less enthusiastic about their choices in November than they were four years ago when Democratic President Barack Obama faced a re-election challenge from Republican Mitt Romney.

Some 52.2 percent of respondents aged 18 to 34 told Reuters/Ipsos they were certain or almost certain to vote, compared with 56.1 percent who reported that level of certainty at the same point in 2012.

The national tracking poll was conducted online in English in all 50 states. It included 3,088 people between 18-34 years old who took the survey from Oct. 1 to Oct. 17, and 2,141 18-34 year olds who took the poll on the same days in 2012. It has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 2 percentage points for both groups.

‘DEEP CYNICISM’

For at least the past half century, young Americans have voted at lower rates than their elders. But this year’s decline in enthusiasm is of particular concern because it comes as the millennial generation – people born from 1981 through 1997 – has become as large a bloc of eligible voters as the baby boomers – born between 1946 and 1964. Each group’s number of eligible voters is approaching 70 million people, according to the Pew Research Center.

“This generation has never trusted the government, Wall Street or the media less,” John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, said of the millennials. “That’s likely to result in turnout of less than 50 percent and of those who do turn out, there is still a deep cynicism regarding the impact of their vote, whether or not it will make a difference.”

The projected low turnout is a particular concern given recent research showing how important habit is in encouraging voter participation. Put simply, a person who votes in one election is about 10 percent more likely to vote in the next than an eligible voter who opted to stay home, said Alexander Coppock, an assistant professor of political science at Yale University.

“If you extend that logic, if you have an election that fails to turn people on to voting, you’d expect that you wouldn’t get that cumulative effect,” said Coppock, whose article “Is Voting Habit Forming?” was published in this month’s issue of the American Journal for Political Science.

However, not all young voters unhappy with their choices will be staying home. Some plan to cast a ballot anyway, even if only in protest, rather than sitting out.

That group includes Cameron Khansarinia, a 20-year-old vice president of the Harvard Republican Club, who said he would cast a ballot even though he opposed Trump.

“I will definitely vote, I just don’t know if I will be writing someone in or voting for (Libertarian) Gary Johnson or even voting for Hillary Clinton when it gets down to it,” said Khansarinia, who is registered to vote in heavily Democratic California. “Once this is over, come Nov. 9, we will need people here to rebuild the party.”

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Guess who’s shopping at dollar stores? Well-to-do millennials

Dollar Tree Sign

By Sruthi Ramakrishnan and Siddharth Cavale

(Reuters) – Victoria Marin, a 35-year old author and educator, used to spend hundreds of dollars at large party-goods retailers on supplies that ended up in the trash can.

But a visit to the neighborhood Dollar General store, mainly to stock up on cheaper paper napkins and plastic cups, completely changed the way she shopped.

She realized the store was more like a small supermarket, where she could buy groceries, Christmas decorations and even apparel at much cheaper prices than at a Walmart or a Shop Rite.

Marin, whose gross annual family income is about $150,000, said she would initially feel awkward about shopping at dollar stores.

That perception, however, changed in the past few years for thousands of shoppers like her as a shaky economy added a good dose of prudence to household budgets.

“As years passed and my family grew, I realized I could buy the same items at a dollar store for a fraction of the price,” said Marin, whose family of six lives in upstate New York.

Marin is among a growing band of affluent millennials who prefer spending less on everyday stuff and splurging on big-ticket items like cars and homes.

They do not need to shop at dollar stores, which sell products mostly priced between $1 and $10, but are increasingly choosing to do so, a move that is reshaping the fortunes of many retailers.

There is no fixed definition for millennials, but experts usually define the term as referring to those born between 1980 and 2000.

Dollar General Corp, the second-largest dollar store chain after Dollar Tree, called out this demographic as a key contributor to its revenue in its post-earnings call last month.

Of the millennials who shopped at Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Dollar Tree-owned Family Dollar stores, in the year ended April, about 29 percent earned over $100,000 a year and accounted for about a quarter of sales at these stores, according to market researcher NPD’s Checkout Tracking, which tracks consumer receipts.

Dollar stores have worked hard to shed the image that they cater to lower-income groups and have invested in retaining customers who traded down from big retail stores after the recession.

Stocking a wider variety of consumables, beauty products and over-the-counter drugs, the interiors of dollar stores now look very much like a Walmart or Target store.

“I get a lot of toiletries (at Dollar Tree), and those aren’t always name brands,” said Eric Brantner, a 33-year-old freelance copywriter who lives in Houston and makes roughly $100,000 a year.

“For instance, the cotton swabs aren’t Q-Tips, but they work just as well and are less than half the price.”

Also, the number of dollar stores has grown rapidly in the last few years, often making them the nearest store in cities as well as small towns.

Dollar General operates more than 12,700 stores in the United States, while Dollar Tree operates about 14,000 stores in the United States and Canada.

Nielsen data shows that the number of heads of households under the age of 35 years who shop at dollar stores and earn more than $100,000 a year rose 7.1 percent between 2012 and 2015, versus a 3.6 percent increase at all retail stores.

Dollar General and Dollar Tree both reported profits above analysts’ expectations for the latest quarter, in contrast with weak profits at department stores such as Macy’s Inc and Target.

Dollar General said millennials contributed about 24 percent to its first-quarter revenue. This included mid and lower-income millennials as well.

Dollar General and Dollar Tree declined to comment beyond what they have said publicly.

(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan and Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)