2016 Election Night

Colorado’s statewide voter database apparently broke down for about 20 minutes this afternoon. This rendered voters unable to cast ballots during that time period, although people who’d previously filled out their mail-in ballots could drop them off. Voters could also drop off provisional ballots during that time. According to the secretary of state’s office, the system is working again now.

Here’s another interesting tidbit from the exit polls: Voters overall consider the economy the top issue facing the next president. But Clinton voters are significantly more focused on the economy than Trump voters, who are more concerned with terrorism and immigration. That runs counter to the narrative, which we’ve previously questioned, that Trump supporters are motivated primarily by economic anxiety. (On the other hand, opposition to immigration may be driven at least in part by economic concerns.)

The ideological divide between old and young voters looks like it’s as big this year as it has been in more than four decades. Since 1972, the American National Election Studies polls have asked voters after elections to place themselves on a scale between 1 (extremely liberal) and 7 (extremely conservative). In a pilot study in January, registered voters 25 and under averaged a score more than a point below voters 65 and up, the biggest gap in any presidential year besides 2000.

Molly Ball profiled “Trump’s Graying Army” in the Atlantic and mentioned this trend, based on analysis of the ANES data by Shawn Patterson, a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, who also helped with our analysis. The ideology of older voters has held fairly steady, but young voters vary more across generations. There are a couple of caveats to keep in mind. This year’s pilot study happened during the primaries, and it’s possible that greater extremes during the primary contests polarized voters. In particular, Bernie Sanders’s popularity with young people might have made them more liberal. Also since we couldn’t know in January if respondents were going to vote in November, the measure here is among all registered voters. This year’s survey also called the extremes of the scale “very liberal” and “very conservative” instead of “extremely liberal” and “extremely conservative.” The ideological gap might not translate into a historically large gap at the polls. Obama won 18-to-29-year-olds by 23 points in 2012, while Romney won the 65+ vote by 12 points. (Pollsters and exit polls typically don’t break out voters 25 and under into their own category.) That’s roughly in line with figures for this year’s race from online pollsters Reuters Ipsos and Morning Consult. That could reflect a drift back to the center since January, or the difficulty of placing Trump on an ideological scale.