You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.
Skip Navigation

Confessions Of A Young Hillary Supporter

Here's your zeitgeist:

Although we are rarely seen in the wild, young Hillary supporters do exist (not that I've ever met another one). To give you an idea of just how outnumbered we are among young voters, I turn to the most tested and reliable gauge of all things collegiate: Facebook. Earlier this fall, Facebook added an application that allows members to declare the candidate they support on their main profile page. Hillary Clinton makes a respectable showing with 88,159 supporters. Barack Obama on the other hand, trounces her with 353,757 supporters. That means for every student who finds Hillary's signature cackle more charming than demonic, there are four more young voters lined up behind Obama. But the odds aren't just against me there. Among young Hillary supporters, men are virtually nonexistent. Of the 60 members of Facebook's "Hilltop—Georgetown Students for Hillary" group, only seven are men. In other words, during the most passionate presidential election in a generation, on a heavily Democratic campus, approximately one out of every 1,000 Georgetown men is supporting the most popular Democratic candidate. (Barack's Georgetown Facebook support group has a much cooler name, of course: "Obama Is a Pimp.")

Relatedly, Fried Siegel writes that "the appeal of Obama and McCain—one too young, the other too old, to have been Baby Boomers—speaks to twentysomethings’ almost palpable disdain for the rancor of Sixties-era partisans in both parties."

--Michael Crowley