A Non-Starter: Voters OVERWHELMINGLY Oppose Pelosi’s Idea to Lower Voting Age to 16

Monica Sanchez | March 19, 2019
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According to a new poll, most voters agree that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s idea to lower the voting age to 16 is a non-starter.

Pelosi told reporters last week that she wishes 16-year-olds could vote so politicians could “capture kids when they’re in high school when they’re interested in all of this, when they’re learning about government to be able to vote.” Well that sounds genuine.

Despite how Congress just shot down an amendment to a bill to lower the legal national voting age from 18 to 16, Pelosi pitched the idea again at a press conference in Ferguson, Mo., on Monday, saying that House Democrats are “collecting thoughts about it.”  

Rasmussen released a new poll on Tuesday showing that an overwhelming majority of likely U.S. voters (74%) oppose lowering the voting age to 16. Just 17% favor the idea.

After Pelosi discussed how she wanted to “capture kids” – or get them involved in politics early, which is what she probably should have said instead – at her weekly press conference last Thursday, Twitter erupted:

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Clearly Americans don’t feel lowering the national voting age to 16 would be a good idea.

Democrats (25%) are more likely than Independents (15%) and Republicans (9%) to support the idea.

According to Rasmussen, “Eighteen is clearly the voting age most Americans are comfortable with. Sixty percent (60%) or more have opposed raising the voting age from 18 to 21 in surveys for years. But 67% favor raising the legal age for buying a gun to 21. Twenty-one percent (21%) of those under 40 favor letting 16-year-olds vote, but older voters are less supportive.”

The Rasmussen survey of 1,000 likely U.S. voters was conducted March 17-18 and has a margin sampling error of 3 percentage points.

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