Young single women are suddenly among the most talked-about voters in America. And when you fold in young married women, as well, looking at all women 18 to 35, you see an even more powerful group emerge — an estimated
13% of the electorate, in fact. And yet, when we first set out to do a meaningful, statistically significant poll of millennial women and their ideas about this election, we got a lot of uneasy feedback from pollsters and researchers. About how millennial women lack the maturity to show up and make their voices heard. About how it would be too expensive and take too long to get in touch with an appropriate sample.
But we found a great partner in
ABC News and were able to survey a random sampling of 566 women across the country, ages 18 to 35 (
see methodology here). And the results are illuminating. Most interesting: Despite the fact that 78% of women believe this election is going to have an impact on their lives, fewer than half believe the presidential candidates are talking about the issues that matter to them. And 47% find all of the candidates to be uninspiring. So, what do Clinton, Sanders, Trump, Cruz, and Kasich need to know to capture this critical group of voters? First and foremost, there isn't just one key issue that matters to all of them. Ahead, the truth about how they plan to vote — and why.