A look at the 18-24 year old cohort a year out
I’m taking all polls with a grain of salt, including this one. But it’s interesting to get a sense of what this particular group is thinking because this is the first presidential election for most of them and like every sub-group of any generation, they have their own experiences and live in a unique world of conventional wisdom that has no other context.
Just 49% of voters aged 18-29 say they “definitely” plan on voting for president next year, according to the new canvass by the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School. That’s
“From a lack of trust in leaders on a variety of critical issues such as climate change, gun violence, and the war in the Middle East, to worries about the economy and AI, young people’s concerns come through loud and clear in our new poll,” Setti Warren, the institute’s director, said in a statement. “As the 2024 campaign season kicks into high gear, candidates up and down the ballot would be wise to embrace the opportunity to listen to – and re-engage – this generation.”
I have little doubt that the Democrats are planning to do that. They have to.
I can’t say I’m surprised that this group would be unenthusiastic about this election. We have two people their great grandfather’s age running for president! Why would they be excited about that? Hardly anyone is. But that doesn’t mean they are unreachable. There are many ways to motivate people and inspiration and identification is only one of them. It does happen to be the most appealing to young people for obvious reasons, but it isn’t the only thing they care about.
In any case, at this point they are still mostly in the Democrats’ camp:
Despite that enthusiasm gap, voters aged 18-30 gave Biden an 11-point edge over former President Donald Trump, with Biden leading 41%-30% in a hypothetical, head-to-head match-up. Thirteen percent of respondents said they were undecided, while 15% said they would not vote.
Nearly 7 in 10 of respondents (69%) who said they supported Biden said their vote was more in opposition to Trump than it was in support for Biden.
The opposite was true among Trump backers, with 65% saying their vote was driven by their loyalty to the four-times indicted and twice-impeached former president, compared to 35% who said they were opposing Biden for re-election, the poll found.
Biden held a 15-point advantage among all young voters who said they were registered to vote (48%-33%), and among the most committed voters, Biden leads by 24 points, 57%-33%. In 2020, exit polls showed Biden winning the youth vote, 60% to 36%, pollsters noted.
Among registered voters aged 18-30, Biden led Trump 34%-26%, while that lead expanded to 16 points among likely voters aged 18-30, 43%-27%, according to the poll.
The poll of 2,098 voters aged 18-29 was conducted from Oct. 23 to Nov. 6, with interviews conducted in both English and in Spanish. The poll had an overall margin of error of 2.86%.
Contrary to what you might have assumed from social media, this is not necessarily driven by the crisis in Gaza. It’s driven by youthful cynicism an emotion I remember well as a young person in the 70s and 80s. (You want shit economics, a 20 year old during the late 70s didn’t exactly have an easy time of it.)
Anyway, here are the numbers on issues:
Biden held head-to-head advantages over Trump on climate change (+19), abortion (+16), education (+14), protecting democracy (+12), health care (+10), gun violence (+9), and the Ukraine War (+4), according to the poll.
Trump had the edge over Biden on the economy (+15), national security and defense (+9), the Israel-Hamas war (+5), strengthening the working class (+4), crime and public safety (+3), and immigration (+2), the poll found
Biden held an overall approval rating of 35%, down one point from spring 2023. Forty percent of respondents said they approved of Democrats in Congress, compared to 27% for Republicans, pollsters found.
The idea that anyone would think Trump is better on immigration, Israel-Hamas and strengthening the working class — or that there’s no difference — is astonishing to me. Some education is obviously required on this.
A closer look at the numbers
The enthusiasm decline was the steepest among young Black voters, with 38% saying they planned to vote in 2024, compared to 50% in 2019, the poll showed.
Enthusiasm also dipped among Hispanic voters, 40% in the new poll compared to 56% in 2019. Enthusiasm among young white voters also dropped by 5%, from 62% to 57%, pollsters found.
Women voters, who also turned out in force in 2020 and the 2022 midterms, motivated by Republican attacks on reproductive rights, also said they were less inclined to vote in 2024, with 47% saying they definitely planned to vote, compared to 56% in 2019.
The major parties also bled support among the key voting bloc, with a third (35%) self-identifying as Democrats; about a quarter (26%) self-identifying as Republicans, and 38% saying they were independent or unaffiliated.
Compared to Harvard’s fall 2019 canvass, most of the drop-off in voting intention comes among Republican (56% in the new poll, compared to 66% in 2019) and independent young voters (31% in the new poll, compared to 41% in 2019), pollsters said.
Enthusiasm remained strongest among self-identified Democrats (66% in the new poll, compared to 68% in 2019).
More voters with a college degree (69%) and college students (55%) said they planned to vote compared to young voters who were not in college or did not have a degree (40%). But even those numbers showed a decline from their 2019 tallies, according to the poll.
They are a key voting bloc for Democrats and it’s going to be very important to get them out. It’s too early to make any assumptions about this, though. Nobody’s got any enthusiasm for this election because everyone knows it’s going to be a shit show. These young people have never known anything else.
One dark finding in these numbers, according to the pollster who appeared on Morning Joe today, is that a majority of men in this cohort support Donald Trump. He attributed it to the Joe Rogan bro effect which unfortunately doesn’t surprise me. The gender gap remains alive and well.