They’re calling it an “age inversion” which is a short way of saying young voters seem to be leaning toward Donald Trump in 2024 while older voters are finding a growing affinity for Joe Biden.
In other words, the Democratic lock on the youth vote ever since former President Barack Obama’s high watermark in 2008 seems to be receding.
It isn’t just one poll showing Trump gutting Biden’s margin with the under-30 voting crowd as several polls have consistently documented the shift in recent months.
In a navel-gazing piece examining the phenomenon and asking whether it’s real or merely a polling mirage, POLITICO delved deeper into the question over the weekend:
Something weird is happening beneath the overall stability of the early 2024 polling — and it’s either a sign of a massive electoral realignment, or that the polls are wrong again.
Polls show former President Donald Trump is ascendant with the youngest bloc of the electorate, even leading President Joe Biden in some surveys, as less-engaged young voters spurn Biden. Meanwhile, Biden is stronger with seniors than he was four years ago, even as his personal image is significantly diminished since he was elected last time.
That would be a generational shift: For decades, Democratic presidential candidates have overwhelmingly won young voters, and Republicans have done the same with the other end of the electorate. Poll after poll is showing that’s flipped this year.
If these changes are real, it would have profound effects on the coalitions both campaigns are building for November. No Republican has won young voters since George H.W. Bush’s landslide victory in 1988, and no Democrat has carried the senior vote since Al Gore hammered Bush’s son, George W. Bush, on Social Security in 2000.
It doesn’t take many guesses as to why voters under age 30 are feeling the pinch and wondering whether the Trump years were better than the Biden years. Many of them, especially those under 25, are just coming out of college and trying to start a life. They’re finding inflation has eaten into their buying power on every front. They don’t have any savings to rely on for backup and they’re still seeking out entry-level jobs while paying rent and housing costs that are record-high in many cities.
In short, as stated previously, it’s Bidenomics driving younger voters back to Trumponomics. It’s not just young voters, it’s also minority voters of all ages realizing that the Biden years are rather lean in terms of disposable income compared to the Trump years.
Despite the obvious, the POLITICO piece continues and explores whether this is just a polling error or a real shift:
Some polls show Trump actually pulling even with — or slightly ahead of — Biden among young voters. But is that a shift or an outlier?
The evidence is mixed, and polls of the overall electorate contain only a small sample of young voters. And because it’s become increasingly difficult for pollsters to interview young people, that increases the chances of errors.
Traditional phone polling — which some media outlets and academic institutions still employ — could be difficult for capturing young voters.
“Even if they’re on a cell phone, they’re much less likely to answer it,” said Abby Kiesa, the deputy director of CIRCLE, a nonpartisan research institute on youth engagement based at Tufts University in Massachusetts. “That makes it hard when people are trying to use phone surveys to reach a representative sample of young people.”
Fair enough, in some respects. I don’t answer a phone number I don’t recognize but I have participated in several text message polls. There’s something less formal about it and the ability to do it on my own time that makes it more inviting. Having to sit and listen patiently through a 20-minute phone call where a disinterested staffer reads out questions like, “On a scale of one to ten with one being the lowest and ten being the highest, how do you rate President Biden’s job on the economy?” Then repeat that for a dozen more questions and the novelty wears off rather quickly.
It would seem that by now pollsters are doing a little bit better job of accounting for voters who don’t answer a phone call.
The escape hatch for young voters who dislike Biden but don’t want to vote for Trump may come in the form of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
This year’s polls are clearly picking up broad dissatisfaction with Biden among young voters, even if they don’t uniformly show Trump gaining ground. The Split Ticket poll shows both Biden (68 percent) and Trump (70 percent) are viewed unfavorably by more than two-thirds of young voters — but, notably, Trump’s “very unfavorable” figure of 61 percent is significantly higher than Biden’s 44 percent.
The young voters Biden needs to win include the 24 percent who have a “somewhat unfavorable” view of him.
While many young voters are joining Trump, many others are deciding that they don’t like either party and will cast their vote for something else. This is why Democratic Party insiders are sweating bullets over RFK Jr’s growing campaign.
As it turns out, voters of all ages dislike what they’ve seen from the Biden administration and a level of nostalgia for the Trump years is setting in. Young voters, some of them not yet old enough to vote in 2016, are now open to the possibility that maybe the man with the mean tweets wasn’t so bad when it comes to economic opportunity.
In a world of chaotic turmoil with Joe Biden at the helm, as a record-setting 11 U.S. embassies have fallen, the Trump years of peace and prosperity have an attractive-looking shine.
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