Iowa’s Secretary of State organizes a youth straw poll the week before the Iowa caucuses. The goal is to encourage young people to be active in public life. If you believe that children tend to support the candidates that their parents support, the youth straw poll can be instructive of who may do well in next week’s caucuses. 26,838 students participated in this year’s youth poll.
On the Republican side, President Trump was the overwhelming first choice, carrying 91% of the Republican vote, followed by Joe Walsh at 5% and Bill Weld at 3.5%. These results are largely consistent with broader surveys of Republican voters.
On the Democratic side, however, there was a major upset with businessman Andrew Yang leading with 22.5%, slightly ahead of Bernie Sanders at 20.6%, and Pete Buttigieg at 17.5%. Joe Biden finished in fourth at 11.5%, Tom Steyer in fifth at 10.0% and Elizabeth Warren in sixth at 9.6% . Yang’s call for universal basic income appears to resonate with the youthful voter.
The results of the straw poll are certainly good news for the Yang team and could suggest that he may have upside next week. The straw poll also confirms Sanders appeal with younger voters. We believe that Sanders will have to do better than 20% among younger voters if he wants to win the broader caucus. We also consider Buttigieg’s third place showing to bode well for his chances next week. Less positive are the showing of Biden, Steyer, Warren, and Klobuchar. A fourth place for Biden would be problematic and sixth place for Warren would almost certainly lead to her departure from the race. It’s probably good news for Steyer that he placed fifth and obviously disappointing for Klobuchar to be all the way back in seventh with only 2.6% of the straw poll.
Trump led the absolute vote tally with 8,858 votes with Yang in second place with 3,862 votes. Less positive for Trump is the fact that the total number of votes for Democratic candidates (~16,000) exceeds those for Republican candidates (~9,500). We’ll have to wait until Monday night to see how predictive the youth straw poll is of the broader electorate.
NewEnglandPolitics.com 