I had an absolutely similar experience when politics came up with my daughter (freshman, 18) who was home on break from a college in Philadelphia this past week end (we live in upstate NY - she just happens to go to college in Philly).
I was going to post my experience to get out there my observation of this emerging phenomenon, and was pleased to see that you got to it first.
My daughter has decided not to vote because she “doesn’t like either candidate”. She was never a Bernie fan as we are a conservative family, but (only recently - we thought she would vote and vote Trump) bought the peer pressure that Trump is somehow a bigot or big mouth or whatever. Sadly my husband and I were not successful in disabusing her of this false perception of Trump.
At any rate, her age cohort is clearly staying home on purpose. Although my daughter has never been a blind follower of her age cohort (she would never be pro choice, for example), I could detect echoes that she is thinking the same as her peers by deciding not to vote.
I was not pleased that she isn’t voting Trump however I’ll take it that this age group is not voting Hillary - they can’t stand her.
It was also obvious that they are firm in this; she purposefully let the registration deadline go by and I am sure that many if not most of the rest of them are doing the same.
My daughter who is going to community college and living at home in California is very conservative and is voting Trump. She just went to each candidates websites and read their positions and decided on Trump.
My son who just graduated from Texas A&M hates Trump, but he has a lot of disdain for Hillary too. I’m not sure he’s registered to vote, and I will not be reminding him to register. He does like to read reddit, so I keep on sending him there about wikileaks.
My daughter at the University of Alabama now says she’s a democrat. Her boyfrind is very political, and will probably be president of the college democrats next year. I sent her the Briebart interview of Juanita Brodderick and Paula Jones, and she texted me saying that she never said she is voting for Hillary. I think she won’t be a Democrat when she and boyfriend break up, and they are starting to have problems.
>>>bought the peer pressure that Trump is somehow a bigot or big mouth or whatever. Sadly my husband and I were not successful in disabusing her of this false perception of Trump.<<<
Isn’t it odd how the personality matters more than what the candidate will do? If your daughter has most of your values she would enthusiastically vote for Cruz/Jeb/Perry/Kasich or whomever might have been the nominee if Trump wasn’t in the race. It’s all about the big issues imho. The SC is the biggest issue to me.