Millennials have nuanced views of Trump
A new poll from Data Orbital, a Phoenix-based polling firm, reveals what you might expect:
Donald Trump’s favorability ratings have gone up in Arizona from April to June.
Data Orbital president George Khalaf said in a statement that this reflects a national trend: The president — and Republicans in general — have seen a slight boost in popularity over the past few months.
Some political observers have suggested that Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy might be at least part of the reason for that (his summit with Kim Jong Un may be another). The president’s job approval rating is back up to where it was during his first week in office (45 percent), according to a new Gallup poll.
And while two-thirds of respondents overall told CNN that they are against separating immigrant families, a majority of Republicans said they supported it.
But here’s the part that surprised me about the Arizona results: Young people appear to have more nuanced views of Trump than their older counterparts.
Nearly 30 percent of 18- to 34-yearolds have a somewhat favorable or unfavorable view of the president, compared with only about 11 percent of those over 65.
There are still plenty of signs of polarization. Roughly 37 percent of Millennials had a strongly unfavorable view of Trump, compared with 22 percent who viewed him strongly favorably.
That was flip-flopped for older Baby Boomers and the Greatest Generation, 45 percent of whom had a strongly favorable view of Trump. Thirty-seven percent of those over 65 had a strongly unfavorable view.
Still, there were fewer young people at the poles, and more in the middle than their elders. And that’s heartening.
It tells me young people are making distinctions between the man and the policy (or maybe they’re just tuning out all the spin, for and against the guy).
And maybe — just maybe — that means there’s hope for us yet. That even when it comes to someone as divisive as the president, we can acknowledge and debate more nuanced views.
Data Orbital’s poll was conducted June 12-14 among 550 likely Arizona general-election voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.