The youth vote has always been something that’s eluded the Republican Party, but now, the Democrats seem to be tripping up with Gen Z and younger millennials.
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According to NPR, Biden’s youth support is bleeding out and quickly, especially from minority youth:
It’s a regularly covered topic as President Biden continues to receive low marks from Gen Z and millennial voters, even as the same age group decidedly voted for him four years ago.
But among younger Black, Latino and Asian American voters, who overwhelmingly sided with Biden in 2020, and at higher rates than young white voters did, support has considerably faltered, according to the University of Chicago’s latest GenForward survey.
The survey, exclusively obtained by NPR, which was conducted from May 10-22, polled the political attitudes of 2,089 Americans under 40, with largely equal samples of white, Black, Latino and Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) individuals.
It found that just one-third of all young Americans said they would back Biden if the election was held at the time the survey was conducted. The poll also reflects a virtual tie in the race. Biden leads former President Donald Trump by just two points, and 34% of respondents are currently backing a third-party candidate or said they would support “someone else.”
The issue for younger voters is the same issue for the older ones. The economy is at the top of everyone’s mind, and Gen Z doesn’t see its economic prospects improving under the Biden administration. An Economist/YouGov poll found that at the top of the chart for concerns, Inflation/prices came in at the top at 23 percent, with immigration next at 13 percent. The issue that the media has been pairing most with the youth, “foreign policy,” only came in at one percent.
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As NPR notes, this doesn’t mean that the youth are migrating to Trump as the alternative. They’re more interested in a 3rd Party candidate at this point. This doesn’t mean that Trump isn’t seeing any bump at all. As Reuters reported in April, the Republican Party is seeing a bump in youth support:
There are also signs young people are slowly warming to the Republican Party, despite Biden’s efforts to keep them on side by trying to cancel student debt, expand affordable housing and reverse curbs on abortion rights.
The share of Americans between 18-29 who identify as Republicans has ticked higher, from 24% in 2016 to 26% in 2020 and 28% so far this year, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows.
It’s not a huge bump, but it’s the crack in the dam that Trump looks to widen.
The Hill reported on Wednesday that Trump’s shiny new TikTok account caught on like wildfire and has already begun to out-perform Biden’s TikTok account by leaps and bounds:
Trump’s first video has garnered 5.2 million likes and 79.4 million views, while his account has gained 5 million followers, easily outstripping the Biden campaign.
The Biden-Harris HQ account, which was created in February, has about 355,000 followers. Its first post during the Super Bowl received a little more than 885,000 likes and 10.7 million views.
“We will leave no front undefended and this represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told The Hill.
In the past, the youth vote could often be counted to be minuscule and ineffectual. Though the youth show the most energy when it comes to supporting certain candidates, they ultimately had a low turnout at the ballot box. The 2020 election showed that the youth vote is now something to be concerned about, as the youth turned out for Democrats in a big way, helping tip the scales for Biden. In that year, 50 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, an 11-point increase from 2016.
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The youth vote is also partly to blame for killing the expected “red wave” of 2022, with 27 percent of the eligible voting youth casting ballots, making it the second-highest youth turnout for a midterm election.
The Trump campaign is wise to start courting the youth vote where they are. As TikTok is one of the most utilized platforms for Gen Z and Millennial voters, Trump’s presence there could do a lot to sway hearts and minds, further cutting into Biden’s pool of youth voters and attracting wayward Democrats who just can’t bring themselves to back the octogenarian.
Trump is enjoying a slight lead over Biden in quite a few polls, but at least securing a larger chunk of the youth vote this year could be a crippling blow to the Biden administration, which has been doing quite a bit to garner its attention, including spending money on meme makers and social media influencers.
That said, we should be careful about counting Biden’s prospects around the youth out. As it gets closer to election time, the fear that Trump really could get elected will probably have younger voters migrating back to Biden, at least by a few percentage points. This is why it’s more important that Trump make his appeal to them now.
But this does provide more than just an opportunity for Trump. The Republican Party could strike while this iron is hot as well. As confidence in the Democrat Party is currently shaken, Republicans could invest time and effort into letting the youth get to know them more. Not only could this help them now, it could help them even more down the line as these voters grow older and become more experienced with the way of the world. While the youth were traditionally not too reliable in an election, they were always a good investment for the long game.
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This means more involvement in the culture and things the youth are interested in, which RedState has made sure to cover quite often.
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