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Whose Rules: How Do Candidates Score on Issues that Matter to Young People?

October 12, 2016

Our generation has the most to lose or gain in this election. In a political climate marked by hyperbolic and hateful rhetoric from politicians, in which immigrants, women, and people of color have been consistently degraded and threatened, we know that it matters more than ever who writes the rules. But this election has focused increasingly on the candidates’ personality traits and character flaws rather than on the issues that matter most to our country.

In the fall of 2015, Roosevelt asked 1,000+ young people across the country to identify across six issue areas the most practical and important reforms decision-makers should tackle after the election. From their answers, we built The Next Generation Blueprint for 2016—a crowdsourced policy agenda from the emerging generation of thinkers and doers. Our cohort overwhelmingly identified education as our top policy priority, followed by the economy, human rights, and democratic access.

So where do the major party candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and the leading third party candidates, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, land on those issues?

Based on the research and analysis of over 30 Roosevelters across the country, we’ve scored the leading candidates on the core issues from the Blueprint. The candidates were ranked from 1 to 5; the higher the score, the closer the alignment to issues raised in Blueprint.

CUMULATIVE RESULTS

Here are the overall results, averaging the candidate’s scores in each of the four policy areas:

  1. Hillary Clinton (3.82)
  2. Jill Stein (2.97)
  3. Gary Johnson (1.93)
  4. Donald Trump (1.34)

RANKINGS BY ISSUE AREA

Below are the average scores for each candidate per policy area:

EDUCATION

On education policies, we asked for scores based on the following priorities: expand universal pre-K, end the school-to-prison pipeline, and decrease the burden of student debt.

The results in this area were:

  1. Hillary Clinton (4.02)
  2. Jill Stein (2.96)
  3. Gary Johnson (1.75)
  4. Donald Trump (1.31)

ECONOMY

On economic policies, we asked for scores based on the following priorities: reform the tax code to ease the burden on low- and middle-income earners, incentivize local investment in disadvantaged communities, and rebalance the relationship between labor and corporations.

The results in this area were:

  1. Hillary Clinton (3.75)
  2. Jill Stein (2.71)
  3. Gary Johnson (1.80)
  4. Donald Trump (1.36)

HUMAN RIGHTS

On human rights policies, we asked for scores based on the following priorities: address the link between criminalization and poverty, reform the justice system, and build our future prosperity based on human dignity.

The results in this area were:

  1. Hillary Clinton (3.81)
  2. Jill Stein (3.05)
  3. Gary Johnson (2.02)
  4. Donald Trump (1.30)

DEMOCRATIC ACCESS

On democratic access policies, we asked for scores based on the following priorities: value the full and varied forms of participation of citizens and non-citizens, reduce barriers to the voting booth and the decision-making rooms of our legislatures and agencies, and prioritize the vote over the dollar.

The results in this area were:

  1. Hillary Clinton (3.71)
  2. Jill Stein (3.17)
  3. Gary Johnson (2.18)
  4. Donald Trump (1.39)

Young people, especially those from Roosevelt’s national network, have shown time and time again that they are interested in smart, innovative solutions. Young people know that we need to fix the broken rules that perpetuate income inequality, the widespread disregard for human rights, failed education systems, and the culture of inaccessibility within the policymaking process at all levels of government. Of the four presidential candidates we surveyed, our network of young people identified Hillary Clinton as the candidate most aligned with the policies that matter to us.