President Biden and fellow Democrats are losing their grip on young voters.
Millennial and Generation Z voters who were monumental in helping give President Trump the heave-ho and giving Mr. Biden’s party total control of Washington are losing faith in Democrats’ performance after less than two years, according to a series of polls. The surveys suggest that young voters want more action on their pet issues, including climate change, gun violence and student loans.
“I guess I am really not surprised, especially by the drop-off of excitement after 2020,” said Christine Sinicki, chair of the Democratic Party of Milwaukee. “Democrats were running last time against basically Public Enemy No. 1 in Donald Trump.
“I think 2020 was an unprecedented year,” she said. “It was lots of excitement, and now that excitement has waned, and we are developing plans to engage more of our young people.”
It is a tenuous situation for Democrats, who have less than seven months to figure out how to reenergize voters born after 1981.
Historic turnout among young voters was key to flipping the Senate and White House in 2020 and wresting control of the House in 2018.
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Exit polls in 2020 showed Mr. Biden won 65% of 18- to 24-year-olds and 60% of 18- to 29-year-olds on his way to becoming the oldest person to assume the presidency.
That support is eroding.
A Quinnipiac University poll released last week showed Mr. Biden with a negative rating of 21% approval to 58% disapproval on his job performance among 18- to 34-year-olds.
“This is a big drop from a year ago, when he had a positive 48% to 42% job approval among 18- to 34-year-olds,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “No doubt he is losing ground with younger voters.”
A Gallup survey released last week also painted a grim picture: Mr. Biden’s approval rating has dropped 20 percentage points among Gen Z and millennial voters since the beginning of 2021.
“As a result, older Americans are now more likely to approve of the president than younger Americans are,” the Gallup poll analysis said.
Whether these disillusioned young voters will give Republicans a serious look or sit out the midterm elections remains to be seen.
What is clear is that their political loyalty is not locked down.
“There are more younger people in play than there were in the last two cycles,” John Della Volpe, director of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics Youth Poll and adviser to the Biden 2020 campaign, told Politico this year. “Democrats need to persuade them and mobilize them. That is the new reality.”
That reality is shaping Mr. Biden’s approach. He is leaning more and more on executive orders in an attempt to show he is fighting for disgruntled youths.
This includes his push to address inequality in the federal government and his recent extension of a moratorium on student loans and his flirtation with eliminating some level of student debt.
Ms. Sinicki, a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly, said addressing student debt would “absolutely” inspire young voters.
“I think student debt is one of the top issues, especially for our young people and our young families,” she said. “That would be a turning point.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last week that Mr. Biden’s use of executive action to cancel some federal student loan debt is “still on the table,” with a decision expected in the months ahead.
It is not the first time Mr. Biden has had to reach out to young voters, many of whom backed democratic socialist Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont in the 2020 primary elections.
Dogged by questions about his age and a decades-long record in the Senate that was out of sync at times with the party base, Mr. Biden told the nation’s youths, “I hear you.”
Mr. Biden said he shared their values on health care, income inequality and climate change.
Mr. Volpe, author of “Fight: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America,” said the message worked because, as he sees it, the first step to courting young voters is to build the case that the government can make a difference in people’s lives.
“Then, after you make that case, then you have to make the case, whichever candidate you are, that you are the person who can make that change,” Mr. Volpe said at a recent forum at the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas.
Since taking office, Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats have struggled to deliver on key parts of their agenda, thwarted by the inability to keep all their members on the same page and by the 60-vote legislative filibuster in the Senate. Democrats have been unable to move forward with a partisan voting rights bill and with Mr. Biden’s $1.75 trillion social welfare package.
Mr. Biden also has faced a barrage of questions over his mental fitness for the job — as evidenced by far-right commentators mocking him last week for appearing to shake hands with thin air after a speech in North Carolina.
The idea that Democrats have become dated also surfaced in recent reports questioning whether Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, 88, was too old to do her job and lingering speculation over whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 82, would fulfill her promise to give up the gavel if Democrats shock the political world by holding the House in November.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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