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Philly area millennial voters shrug at Clinton presidency

They are satisfied with their own lives but also deeply disaffected by the course of the country. They grudgingly accept that Hillary Clinton may be their next president, but that seems more about rejecting Donald Trump and a disappointment in third-party candidates.

They are satisfied with their own lives but also deeply disaffected by the course of the country.

They grudgingly accept that Hillary Clinton may be their next president, but that seems more about rejecting Donald Trump and a disappointment in third-party candidates.

They are a very small sampling of undecided millennial voters from Philadelphia and the suburbs.

They describe themselves as indifferent, a word often tossed about derisively when others describe the millennial generation, age 16 to 34, born from 1982 to 2000.

They don't seem to care about that, or how the media tell their story, or how political parties want to label and group them.

The Harvard University Institute of Politics gathered eight undecided millennial voters last week - four men, four women, a mix of whites and minorities with various political leanings - for a two-hour focus group in Philadelphia.

Their opinions matter.

Millennial voters are 26 percent of Pennsylvania's 8.5 million voters. They are 35 percent of Philadelphia's 1 million voters.

And they keep coming. Of the 325,168 new and adjusted voter registrations in the state last month, 59 percent of them were from voters age 17 to 34.

Pennsylvania is a key state in next month's presidential election. Millennials, if they turn out to vote, could swing the state for a candidate.

The focus group was not a scientific sampling of their generation. But the thoughts shared by those eight voters, who ranged in age from 21 to 28, painted a vivid picture.

It would be more precise to say the group Googled on their cellphones vivid pictures of their outlook on the nation, because that is what the moderator asked them to do.

One by one they showed him the pictures they summoned - a circus, people absorbed in their cellphones at a restaurant, a worker eating fast food in front of a computer, a Black Lives Matter sign that said "Hands up, don't shoot," a cartoon about student debt, a Trump rally compared to a 1933 Nazi gathering, a woman terrified by terrorism, former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson holding up his hands.

Their takes on the Democratic and Republican nominees for president were just as bleak.

On Trump: All about himself, a bully with bad judgment, a racist and misogynistic poor businessman who is all talk.

On Clinton: An experienced career politician who is shady but knowledgeable, hardworking and corrupt, an untrustworthy liar who says one thing in private and another in public.

Only one member of the group, a Democrat from Havertown who works as a nanny, was thinking about voting for Trump. She called him "hot tempered but smart." She later said life with Clinton as president would be "semi-OK" and better than with Trump.

The group's lone Republican, a self-employed tech consultant in Philadelphia, was fervently anti-Trump and said Clinton should try to be "more human" and less of an "automaton."

Just one of the eight, an employee of a staffing agency from Media who was clearly a fan of Green Party nominee Jill Stein, said she felt disappointed by President Obama.

The seven others said they would prefer a third Obama term to whatever comes from the election.

Asked to consider life with President Trump, the group described a chaotic country embarrassed on the world stage. One raised the possibility of impeachment. Another wondered about assassination.

Asked to consider life with President Clinton, they predicted relief in the stability of avoiding a President Trump. There was absolutely no enthusiasm.

They were, in a word, indifferent.

brennac@phillynews.com

215-854-5973

@ByChrisBrennan