As others have noted it would be extremely difficult to identify exactly how those 18 Years old at the time of November 2016 election would have voted....
I'm not sure if any state exit polls even broke down the 18-21 demographic from the 18-29, for those states that had exit polls.
Additionally, there are very few places we can go to mine data for the 18-21 year demographic, since it is distributed in a wide variety of Counties, Cities, and communities....
1.)
However, we are starting to develop a clear picture of how undergrad College students voted at major Universities throughout the US at the Presidential level, on a thread that I started a few months back, initially looking at how municipalities within Division 1-A football teams voted, and am now starting to drill it down to the University Precinct level, trying to separate both "Dorm Vote" and "Off-Campus Undergrad Vote" (Based on Census data for high concentrations of 18-19 years)....
So far in the project, using quick ballpark math, I'm estimating that we might have a sample size of some 100,000 precinct level votes identified just in the PAC-12, Big 12, and part of the Big 10- East... My goal was eventually to roll up the raw vote numbers of Undergrad Precincts in all of the College Football 1-A teams into total numbers and percentages and then do a compare/contrast vs 2012 numbers.
It's still very much a work in progress, but I think I started drilling down in 2016 detail somewhere around here...
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=273504.msg5883836#msg5883836and started consolidating Undergrad student precinct votes by NCAA Conference around here using a graphical format to translate some of the raw Text data that I've been consolidating....
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=273504.msg5925650#msg59256502.) There are limited opportunities to look at the 18-21 Year vote using verifiable statistical data (Census Data) overlapped with precinct data....
Military Base precincts are potentially another area of exploration because of the high concentration of individuals in this age range.
Based upon my personal experience, as well as that of good friends and family members, Barracks and Dorm life are fascinatingly similar in many regards, and additionally you have a fusion melting pot of young folks from all regions, racial/ethnic/religious backgrounds, that in some ways is more demographically representative of the younger Millennial Generation perhaps than in some ways 18-21 Year students attending Academic Institutions that frequently might be less accessible for lower-income Americans, not to mention being significantly "Whiter" than the demographic at large.
What is problematic with Military Base precincts, is that many young Enlisted Men and Women living in the Barracks, vote absentee ballot at their parent(s) precinct, since the nature of the Military lifestyle is not particularly conducive towards a stable "home town" housing scene.
3.) So outside of high density Undergrad "Student Ghettos" and "Military Barracks", we can't really say for sure using actual election data HOW these voters voted....
4.) Still, it's pretty evident that HRC won the 18-21 year old vote by significant margins in 2016...
The biggest question in my mind was how did the Democratic/Republican nominees perform vs '08>'12>'16 numbers, AND what did overall 18-21 year old turnout look like in 2016 and what did 3rd Party Candidate voting numbers look like?
5.) I would actually be shocked if 18-21 Year olds voted only 55-40% Clinton, considering that overwhelmingly White Undergrad student populations voted for HRC by much larger numbers, and that Latino-American and African-American, as well the rapidly growing percentage of young Americans that come from Biracial and Multi-Ethnic Family backgrounds, do not appear to have embraced the Trump message in '16, and in fact much of the Latino surge in places like California, Arizona, and Texas, was heavily driven by new younger voters.
6.) My suspicion is that the Undergrad College vote might be the best data we will have to look at the 18-21 year aged vote, because of the large sample size and geographical and demographic diversity....
Although the numbers skew Middle-Class and Upper-Middle Class, they also skew heavily White, but when we see HRC winning places like West Virginia University, Baylor, and Oklahoma State University, Iowa State University, and Kansas State University comfortably, even the deepest Red or "Atlas Blue" states of WV,TX,OK,IA, and KS, that tells you something right there.....
7.) As famous American author and satirist Mark Twain once said: "There are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics".... My reading is that statistics is the worse lie of them all, but I'm sure someone with some literary background and reading will jump in and fact check the paraphrased quote (totally cool).
However, personally at least if we properly use math and scientific methods to bring us closer to an understanding of the truth, I think we can avoid the "Fake News" and "Partisan Spin".
8.) Anecdotal (Hence not scientific polling).... I currently live in a County that voted for Trump by +20 %... It is an overwhelmingly White Working Class County, that historically and even currently has an extremely large manufacturing component of the economy, many of whom pay really decent wages above and beyond current wages for certain skill-sets to attract workers.
This is a County that had a 12% unemployment rate at the height of the Bush Recession / Great Recession, with Millennials (Especially younger Millennials hit hardest with structural unemployment rates over 20-25% for those at the bottom of the hiring chain).
After getting laid off from a decent paying job and being out of work for awhile, I took a Warehouse job for a large Corporate Distribution Center, vast majority of whom were Millennials, including quite a few younger Millennials....
Now I'm working in subcontract Manufacturing setting not so far away, but just one County over.
Still, even in heavily White-Working Class small factory town Oregon, I haven't met a single Trump supporter under the age of 29, although plenty that voted 3rd Party Candidates !!!!
9.) OT---- but I love your sig and have for quite awhile RFKFan68....both my parents were crushed when they watched that live in their Mid '20s back in the late '60s....
