Politicians: Millennials Won't Vote Because They Hate You

Most young people don’t plan to vote in the midterm elections, even though they have clear political preferences, according to a Harvard survey released on Wednesday. Most U.S. millennials want Democrats in control of Congress, but the 26 percent who say they will cast a ballot next week will vote for Republicans, according to the Harvard Institute of Politics study (PDF) of more than 2,000 people age 18-29.

The potentially nonvoting masses—the 72 percent of respondents who expressed some doubt about voting—gave five different reasons they wouldn’t be trekking to the polls that all say the same thing about their generation’s views on politics: We don’t care. They were staying out of the game for roughly the same reason no one watched the World Series. It’s consequential, but still pretty boring. As my colleague Emily Greenhouse at Bloomberg Politics reported: