FEATURED WRITING

Convention Didn’t Solve Hillary’s Millennial Women Problem

This article originally appeared in Forbes.

The story out of last week’s Democratic National Convention is that Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other speakers unified the Democratic Party. But my interviews with several DNC delegates suggest that Clinton still has work to do to mobilize the support of young women.

Millennial women didn’t flock to Clinton during the primaries. In the New Hampshire primary, for example, NBC exit polls show that Senator Bernie Sanders beat Clinton among women by 11 points. He won 82 percent of the vote of women under 30. That is a YUUUGE gap. This was after Clinton brought out Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to try to win over women.

A March USA TODAY/Rock the Vote poll found that Sanders was leading Clinton among millennial women with a 61 percent to 30 percent divide, a greater split than the 54-37 percent split among younger voters. And in June, CNN analyzed the age and gender breakdown from 27 primary states and found that Clinton led Sanders 61 percent to 37 percent with women. But among 18 to 29 year-old women, Sanders was on top of Clinton by an average of 37 percentage points

Even after the primaries have ended, it appears that Clinton may still have a millennial women issue.

On the night of Clinton’s acceptance speech at the DNC, I walked the floor to ask female delegates under age 40 what they thought of the nominee. It was surprisingly difficult to find a woman delegate under 40 who supported Clinton. At Clinton’s own convention, this was a challenge. Of the five women I interviewed, only one was a Clinton advocate. One other delegate I started to interview said she didn’t want to go on the record against Clinton (although she was).

My interviews of course weren’t a sophisticated representative sample of the more than 4,000 delegates at the convention. But it is interesting that the delegates I talked to haven’t all coalesced around Clinton or at least didn’t decline to be interviewed (like the one delegate).

There was a clear distrust of Clinton evident in my interviews, leading some to prefer not to vote at all rather than vote for Clinton.

Katherine Snyder, a 27 year-old Pennsylvania Delegate, said, “I’m not going to vote for any presidential candidate. I hate Trump. He is disgusting. I’m just going to vote in local races and leave the presidential blank.”

Why?

She says she has lots of policies that I would ostensibly support. But her record shows her words rarely match her actions and I can’t trust a person whose words don’t match their actions. I think the Clinton Foundation is going to end up being a huge liability in the general election and Democrats are making a mistake by nominating her. In my opinion, we are in the middle of a political realignment and it is no longer left vs. right, but establishment vs. anti-establishment and Trump knows it and she doesn’t. And the DNC is completely oblivious. They are digging our grave.

Ellen Ross, a 22 year-old Delegate from Illinois, said, “I’m not voting for Hillary Clinton. I’m not Bernie or Bust. It was just so obvious that the primary was rigged that I can’t support her after that. I will probably vote, but I need to research all the candidates. If she would acknowledge corruption in the past, that would be nice. I don’t see her doing that.”

For Ross, it is Clinton herself that is the problem. Asked if she supported Clinton’s policies, she said, “I support lots of them, just not her.”

Jennifer Campoli, a 31 year-old New York Delegate, was still deciding who she is going to vote for and expressed frustration that Sanders supporters, “haven’t been treated respectfully.” She said,

Our age is hard. It might be a difficult crowd because the crowd I hang out with is really progressive. They tend to support Senator Sanders. I’m excited to have our first female presidential nominee from our party. 100 years ago we couldn’t vote. But I don’t know who I am going to vote for. I am unsure. I am in a blue state, so I have the luxury of not having to support the candidate.

Many Sanders and Clinton supporters still weren’t united on the last night of the convention. When I asked Jada Peten, an 18 year-old Sanders Delegate from Arkansas, for whom she was voting, she said, “I’m not sure myself.” She is proud of the platform, which she described as “our platform.”

I did find one Clinton supporter, Kelli Caldwell, a 35 year-old Pennsylvania Delegate, who said, “Sometimes it can be difficult because millennial Democrats are strong supporters of progressive candidate Bernie Sanders. I want to change the narrative that is perceived. The former secretary doesn’t get enough credit for the ceiling she has broken.” Her support for Clinton is personal:

I supported Hillary because she is truly the most qualified candidate. Her pushing legislation for a children’s health insurance program personally affected my life. I was diagnosed with scoliosis at 16. When my mother applied for CHIP and I got it, I got a surgery that saved my life. It is about can she do the job. No candidate is completely perfect.

Recognizing that some young women delegates weren’t excited about Clinton, I asked Danielle Glover, Vice President of the Young Democrats of America, how she makes the case that young women should vote for Clinton. She said:

Talking about issues impacting us first versus talking about a candidate first makes it easier to connect and talk about how Hillary can further the issue they care most about. Additionally, if she is a Bernie supporter, I emphasize how the Bernie revolution is about issues not a person and how much more we can get done with HRC in office versus Trump. There is more room for consensus building within the same party.

The problem is that at least for most of the young millennial women I talked to, the race is about a person. And they distrust that person.

While Clinton continues to lead Donald Trump in polls of millennials, the gender divide could really matter. Young voters were one of the key constituencies for President Barack Obama’s reelection. How well Clinton does among millennial women will help determine how much she can count on millennials to push her over the edge in her race for the White House.

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