In the past 40 years, the only two U.S. election cycles in which the under-30 turnout was enough to propel a party into power in Washington were the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election.
That age group, in 2020, backed President Joe Biden by a whopping 25-point margin.
In short, that bloc of voters can be thanked for Democrats’ majorities in the House and Senate and for Biden being in the White House.
However, by the end of his first year, Biden and the rest of the Democrats had squandered that goodwill among young people in spectacular fashion. His numbers have plunged to lows not seen for a Democratic president in generations — down to the low 30s in several polls and surveys, including Gallup.
This is a bloc of voters on the older end, cognizant of the images and emotions when 9/11 happened; they watched their parents weather the Great Recession, saw their older siblings or parents fight in two wars, grew up in a culture dominated by social media — for good and for ill. They have witnessed the racial strife, celebrity-ism, violent protests that burned cities down. They entered adulthood with a welcome mat rolled out by a pandemic and economic instability.
Ask any politically active young person you meet who is a Democrat, and you will find they believe Biden is not doing enough on the things they care about — free college, climate change, and a wide range of social justice issues. They will tell you the Democrats in Washington are not moving forward with urgency on those policies they believe the time we live in requires; and they are pretty peeved about that.
Dig deeper, and these young Democrats will tell you their motivation to turn out for Democratic candidates in 2018 and Biden in 2020 was not because they thought those candidates spoke to them. It’s just that they really, really disliked Donald Trump.
They will tell you few figures in Democratic national politics inspire them. Pete Buttigieg? Meh. Kamala Harris? Nah. Gavin Newsom? Not really. Eric Adams? Who?
In the 2018 midterm elections, when Trump was not on the ballot but on everyone’s mind, Democrats won voters under the age of 30 by more than 30 percentage points. This week’s latest Quinnipiac poll shows that Democrats lead Republicans in the general congressional vote by just 7 percentage points among those under the age of 35. As for Biden, this youngest group of voters hates him most, giving him only a 21% approval rating and 62% disapproval.
Now, that does not mean they like Republicans running for Congress better — that same Quinnipiac poll shows they still dislike Republicans more than Democrats. But Democrats’ collapse among young voters could be devastating to their hopes that the Dobbs decision will galvanize young people to show up for them in the fall.
Young voters will tell you, if you show up and ask, that they see no reason to turn out. From their viewpoint, they believed it when Biden told them he would cancel student debt, improve the economy, and bring back an era of working together and compromise.
Even the least politically engaged young person will tell you none of that happened, and they will use their disappointment in the most powerful way they can. No, they are not going to vote for Republicans — they are, however, leaning toward just not showing up at all. Abstention is a form of populism that few understand, but it has in past elections determined the majority. Just ask the Republicans who won in 2006, or the Democrats who won in 2010.
