Republican Party looks to young lawmaker in bid to improve standing with millennials

Republicans this week turned to their youngest-ever representative, Rep. Elise M. Stefanik, to try to improve the party’s chances of capturing more of the ever-elusive millennial generation’s vote.

The first-term congresswoman from Albany won’t turn 31 until next week, but she was in the chairwoman’s seat as the House Republican Policy Committee held a Capitol Hill skull session Tuesday exploring how the party can do a better job of courting the rising generation of millennial voters. The first public meeting of the RPC’s Millennial Task Force featured a panel of experts, a trending hashtag and questions funneled in via Twitter.

“It is imperative that a new generation of leaders step up to the plate,” said Ms. Stefanik. “This will only happen if there is a baseline recognition that government is trying to work for our generation.”

President Obama’s support among younger voters proved critical to both his 2008 and 2012 elections. Mr. Obama actually lost the popular vote to challenger Mitt Romney in 2012 among voters 30 and older by a 50 percent-to-48 percent margin, but ran up the score by winning among voters age 18 to 29 by a 60 percent-to-38 percent margin. The GOP did better in the 2014 midterms, and party officials insisted this week that the votes of the millennials are up for grabs.

Rep. Luke Messer, the Indiana Republican who chairs the Republican Policy Committee, said that four out of five millennials are not politically active, and 40 percent do not identify with either party.

Mr. Messer said appealing to millennials and addressing their concerns was more than just a political calculation, citing what he said was an “alarming” level of cynicism about governing among younger voters, a cynicism he acknowledge was “not unwarranted” given the frustrating policy battles and legislative stalemates in Washington.

“The millennials are the nation’s next generation of leaders,” he said, adding, “We need to show millennials we care more about their interests than special interests.”

“Millennials” are defined as those born between the years 1981 and 1996, making them 19 to 34 years old in 2015.

The committee attempted to both paint a more nuanced picture of what the millennial generation is like as a whole and discuss strategy for how to target the nation’s youngest voters. According to many of the experts, the more things change, the more they stay the same: The surveys show millennials in general share similar core values with their elders but have moved away from the institutions that are traditionally used to convey these values.

John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Institute of Politics, told the briefing that millennials still believe in working to better society. “Young people want to make a difference,” he said, adding, “They believe in making the world better.”

However, he noted, 72 percent of college-age students do not trust the government to do the right thing. Rather than seeing electoral politics as the way to accomplish change, millennials would rather turn to social activism.

Similarly, while millennials place great importance on family, they have a broader definition that extends beyond the nuclear family. They are also much less likely to identify with an organized religion but still very likely to embrace faith.

Kristen Soltis Anderson, co-founder of research center Echelon Insights, said that profile suggests that the GOP should focus on “solutions that make sense rather than ideological wins.”

For example, millennials in general are not opposed to big government as a concept, but they are opposed to the inefficiency that often accompanies it. Rather than focusing on making government smaller for ideological reasons, Ms. Anderson recommended emphasizing the functional benefits of slimming down the federal bureaucracy and reducing the reach of government.

On some social issues, however, the millennials represent a clear break from previous generations.

There is, for example, “no compromise on the federal position on gay marriage,” according to Jared Meyer of the Manhattan Institute. He said a survey found three out of four millennials favor same-sex marriage, that the number is growing, and there is “not much leeway.”

Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Center, agreed that the issue of same-sex marriage carries a “tremendous amount of symbolic value for young people.”

Mr. Keeter also noted that education reform is consistently listed as the most important issue for young Americans, and suggested the party that helps find a sustainable way to alleviate student debt could capture a considerable amount of the vote.

Assuming normal life expectancies, millennials — an echo of the baby boom generation that dominated political and cultural trends for decades — represent a voting bloc of 75 million Americans that could be casting votes until 2076.

Millennials present some paradoxes for political parties seeking to woo them. They are the most educated generation ever and are at the forefront of entrepreneurship and technological innovation. But they are also more unemployed than any other generation and face an education debt load far beyond what their parents carried.

The panelists were united in their belief that it is now the responsibility of the government to bring this generation back into the public sphere.

“Before any elected official talks about any particular position or an issue, we need to start with forming a relationship,” Mr. Della Volpe said.