Nearly one in four millennials prefer a giant meteor strike destroying humanity than witnessing a Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump presidency, according to a new poll.
Twenty-three percent of Americans ages 18 to 35 prefer the extinction-level event to either 2016 nominee, according to the UMass-Lowell/Odyssey survey released Tuesday.
{mosads}Thirty-nine percent would opt for President Obama serving a life term over either Clinton or Trump becoming president, while 26 percent would favor a random lottery electing the next president over either major-party nominee.
“We do not take our respondents at their word that they are earnestly interested in seeing the world end, but we do take their willingness to rank two constitutional crises and a giant meteor ahead of these two candidates with startling frequency as a sign of displeasure and disaffection with the candidates and the 2016 election,” said Joshua Dyck, co-director of UMass-Lowell’s Center for Public Opinion.
Pollsters also found Clinton leads Trump by a 3-to-1 margin among millennials who are likely to vote.
Clinton is backed by 66 percent to Trump’s 22 percent in a head-to-head matchup, with 12 percent undecided.
Her lead shrinks when third-party candidates are factored into the race.
Clinton is backed by 61 percent of likely voters in a four-way matchup, with 22 percent backing Trump, 9 percent backing Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, 5 percent backing Green Party candidate Jill Stein and 3 percent undecided.
Among voters overall, Clinton leads Trump by 7 points nationwide in the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls less than a month before Election Day.
The survey of 1,247 millennials, including 680 likely voters, was conducted online Oct. 10-13 and has an overall margin of error of 3.2 points and margin of error of 4.2 points for likely voters.