Bernie Sanders Is Changing The Way Millennials Think: Survey

Even though the defeat of Bernie Sanders in various states has reduced his chances of winning the Democratic nomination, he may have actually changed the American youth's mindset for a politically different future, says Max Ehrenfreund in Wonkblog.

A poll of Americans between 18 to 29 years shows that Sanders is the most popular presidential candidate among voters in this age group, which have become decisively liberal in the past year.

The information was gathered by experts from Harvard University, and indicates that apart from creating an "unexpectedly competitive Democratic primary," Sanders has also created profound and deep change among the millennial mindset about politics, said polling director John Della Volpe.

"He's not moving a party to the left. He's moving a generation to the left," Della Volpe said of the senator from Vermont. "Whether or not he's winning or losing, it's really that he's impacting the way in which a generation - the largest generation in the history of America - thinks about politics."

Hence, far from being just a fashion cult or fad, Sanders has become an idea generator, whom the young people are absorbing with great seriousness.

While one Harvard poll in 2014 showed that supporters of the idea that "basic health insurance is a right for all people" was 42 percent, they shot up to 45 percent last year and 48 percent during Monday's survey.

Thus, those who agree that "basic necessities, such as food and shelter, are a right that the government should provide to those unable to afford them" constitute 47 per cent, rising from 43 per cent last year. Those who accede that "The government should spend more to reduce poverty" has shot up from 40 percent to 45 percent.

It's a remarkably rare phenomena, because, as Della Volpe said, young people's attitudes do not change so much from one year to the next in Harvard's survey. It is also strange that so many of these viewpoints are shifting so radically in the same direction at the same time.

Thus, for the first time in five years of Harvard's polls, so many more young people are calling themselves Democrats than independents. While 40 percent are Democrats, 22 percent are Republicans and 36 percent are independent.