Let\u2019s stipulate at the outset that President Biden\u2019s ongoing difficulties with younger voters \u2014 stark when measured overall, less so when considered through the lens of party \u2014 are probably not heavily driven by enthusiasm for Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
To some degree, sure. But if we accept that Biden is having trouble figuring out what message resonates with voters under 30, we should probably also accept that clunky, dishonest, obviously pandering appeals from Trump (like Monday\u2019s \u201cCrooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok\u201d riff) aren\u2019t a major driver.<\/p>\n
Often, analyses of Biden\u2019s relatively poor performance among young voters center on his support for Israel\u2019s response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas. Younger voters are demonstrably more sympathetic to the Palestinians in Gaza than are older Americans, and many see Biden\u2019s loyalty to Israel as a moral failure. Democratic concerns about how Arab Americans would view Biden in November have expanded to younger Americans more broadly.<\/p>\n
These analyses, though, overlook an important point: Biden has had trouble with younger voters for years.<\/p>\n
In April 2022 I looked at the decline in Biden\u2019s approval rating since his inauguration, noting that it was sharpest among the youngest Americans. At the time, I chalked it up in part to the overlap of young voters and nonpartisans, among whom Biden\u2019s approval had also fallen sharply. In part, it was also because he had further to fall with those voters.<\/p>\n
In YouGov polling since Biden took office, you can see a lot of volatility in how younger voters view the sitting president. The lines below show the average of YouGov approval polls over the preceding 30 days (with individual polls shown as dots). You can see that faster-than-voters-overall plunge throughout 2021 \u2014 and then a resurgence among younger Americans into 2023. Then, in spring 2023, a big drop followed by a slow climb and then, recently, another drop.<\/p>\n
(The Oct. 7 attack is shown with a vertical dashed line for reference.)<\/p>\n
The resurgence was also seen among independents, but otherwise, the under-30 polling has been much more volatile. This isn\u2019t surprising by itself. The subgroup of respondents under 30 is relatively small compared with other groups and that lends itself to more volatility and bigger swings in opinion.<\/p>\n
If we compare polling among those under 30, independents and those 65 and older to the overall approval rating Biden has seen, we see that the period coming into 2022 was the only time in which his approval among younger Americans was lower than his overall approval. The recent drop threatens to have the same effect, but he\u2019s not there yet.<\/p>\n
The point here isn\u2019t that we know why those numbers are going up and down. It\u2019s that they are consistently volatile and not newly low relative to Biden\u2019s overall approval numbers.<\/p>\n
Gallup polling offers a different perspective on younger Americans. In February, we reported on Gallup data showing that younger Americans had shifted to the right since 2020. That\u2019s probably in part because Gallup is looking at all adults, not just registered voters (which is the group included in YouGov\u2019s data). But notice how Gallup\u2019s assessments of Biden\u2019s approval differs since 2021: Younger Americans are consistently less approving of Biden than Americans overall.<\/p>\n
Or, shown in the same manner as the YouGov data, you can see that the orange line is fairly consistently under the midpoint here, meaning that in most months Biden has lower approval from young Americans than from Americans overall. The opposite is true among older Americans.<\/p>\n
The Gallup data are monthly, and only through the end of March. There may be a further decline in the April numbers mirroring the recent YouGov drop. But the point remains: lower-than-overall approval isn\u2019t itself new.<\/p>\n
The difference between the YouGov and Gallup data and who is included in their measures is important for thinking about November, as we wrote on Monday morning. But the point here is different: it\u2019s to note that Biden\u2019s approval among younger Americans \u2014 and even the recent drop seen in YouGov\u2019s data \u2014 are not a new development.<\/p>\n
To the extent that he has one, then, Biden\u2019s problem with younger voters isn\u2019t solely one that derives from his handling of Gaza.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s stipulate at the outset that President Biden\u2019s ongoing difficulties with younger voters \u2014 stark when measured overall, less so when considered through the lens of party \u2014 are probably not heavily driven by enthusiasm for Donald Trump. To some degree, sure. But if we accept that Biden is having trouble figuring out what message […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}