Millennials Still Feeling Pretty Apathetic About the Election

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Democracy Corps has an interesting new survey out. Basically, it shows that women hate Donald Trump; unmarried women really hate Donald Trump; and the white working class doesn’t actually seem to like him any better than they liked Romney.

But here’s the bit that interested me:

What this shows is that, generally speaking, traditional Democratic constituencies have been more fired up by this year’s election theatrics than traditional Republican groups. That’s bad news for Trump.

But there’s one exception: millennials. They’re the least engaged of all groups, and the election hasn’t done much to change that. Their enthusiasm is up a few points from December, but that’s all. Millennials in college are a lot more engaged—the women, anyway—but millennials in general aren’t showing much more enthusiasm than usual even though they’re starting from a low base.

This gets to one of my pet gripes: the conflation of millennials with college students. Whenever you hear about the millennial vote, it’s almost always illustrated by either college students or college grads. That’s fine, as long as it’s noted. But usually it’s not. And college grads are not representative of all millennials. In fact, as this chart shows, quite the contrary.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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