Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Hillary Clinton's Support Among Young Voters Lags In Florida

Ryan Benk
/
WJCT News
Jacksonville Democrats watch election returns come in at Cuba Libre Dance Club Tuesday night.

As NPR reports, young people didn't show up to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the numbers her campaign expected. That’s according to exit polls of millennial voters.

Jacksonville Young Democrats President Kristellys Estanga, a former Bernie Sanders delegate, said as much as she tried to unite her millennial peers behind Clinton, the effort fell short.

“Personally I do think, being a Bernie supporter so I may be biased, but we we’re also looking at numbers and we we’re saying it the whole time: ‘Somebody like Bernie would’ve beat Donald Trump with more ease,’” she said Tuesday night.

Estanga said that doesn’t mean she thinks Clinton wasn’t preferable to Trump, but she understands the lack of enthusiasm.

NPR reports, one problem for Clinton is about 7-percent of young voters say they opted for a third-party candidate. Florida is a young state, with a fifth of its voters under the age of 30, so they could be partially responsible for swinging the state.

Reporter Ryan Benk can be reached at rbenk@wjct.org, at (904) 358 6319 or on Twitter @RyanMichaelBenk.

Ryan Benk is a former WJCT News reporter who joined the station in 2015 after working as a news researcher and reporter for NPR affiliate WFSU in Tallahassee.