Democrats worry young people souring on party

Democrats are calling for their 2024 candidates to reengage with young voters amid signs that the critical voting bloc may be distancing from the party.

Recent polling has found the number of young people who identify as Democrats is on a slight decline, while President Biden has seen wavering support from the demographic that played a pivotal role in his victory over former President Trump in 2020.

Adding to the concerns is a recent analysis from John Della Volpe, the polling director at the Harvard Kennedy Institute of Politics, who pointed to possible struggles the party faces with voters between 18 and 29.

“Nearly every sign that made me confident in historic levels of youth participation in 2018, 2020, and 2022 — is now flashing red,” Della Volpe wrote in his analysis of 2024, adding “the ground is more fertile for voting when youth believe voting makes a tangible difference.” 

Cheyenne Hunt, a 25-year-old Democrat and Tik Tok influencer who’s running to be the first female Gen Z member of Congress, cautioned that Democrats shouldn’t take her peers for granted.

“There's less of a sense of loyalty to a particular party, I think, and more of a sense of really taking a look at the system and feeling left behind and forgotten — and young people engage with passionate candidates who are going to jump in there and do the dirty work to advocate for our best interests,” Hunt told The Hill.

Gen Z especially has felt let down by the political system, leading both to more political mobilization and to less affiliation with established parties, Hunt said, and the demographic needs to be met “where they are.”

“We are one of the most politically mobilized generations in American history, judging by the turnout numbers after the last midterms, and we are in a place now where you have to constantly engage us. And I understand why, you know? You look at the system and the status quo, and a lot of younger folks feel really betrayed,” Hunt said.

The candidate for California’s 45th district said that, with her 2024 campaign’s approach to young voters, “we're not playing the game like this is business as usual.”

In 2019, 39 percent of respondents in the Harvard Youth Poll reported identifying as Democrat — and the figure fell slightly to 35 percent this spring. The share of youth voters identifying as independents or “unaffiliated with a major party,” on the other hand, climbed from 36 percent in 2019 to 40 percent this year. The share of youth voters identifying as Republican saw a statistically insignificant shift from 23 percent to 24 percent.

Della Volpe argued that although young voters appear to be getting more progressive in their values, fewer are identifying as Democrat or liberal, are paying close attention to political news and are likely to believe in politics as a means for system change. The share of younger voters who say they’ll “definitely” vote in the 2024 race is now at 51 percent in the Harvard poll, down from 55 percent who said the same at this point in the 2020 race.

Volpe wrote “daylight’s burning” for the Democrats, who need young voters “to win today and maintain and grow an electoral edge in the years ahead.”

Signs that younger voters are skeptical of the party establishment have been cropping up for years. 

An overall rise in Americans identifying as independent has been noted since 2009, according to Gallup polling. The uptick has been attributed largely to Generation X and millennials holding onto independent identification as they age, whereas greater shares of previous generations tended to attach themselves to a party as they age. 

Abby Kiesa, deputy director of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts, stressed “there is not always a direct connection between young people’s party ID and who they vote for.”

Though young voters have been noted as less likely than older generations to affiliate with a party, Kiesa said, the last three election cycles “have seen some pretty solid 18-to-29-year-old support for Democratic candidates,” despite the trend away from party IDs. 

Younger Americans boosted Biden to victory in 2020, with 61 percent of voters under age 30 supporting him, according to AP VoteCast. But it’s not clear by how much the voting bloc will turn out for Democrats this election cycle.

The latest Harvard Youth Poll found Biden earned an approval rating of 38 percent among American registered voters between ages 18 and 29, a 3-point drop since last fall and a 5-point drop since last spring.

Younger voters “really don't have a strong identity in terms of party politics,” said Ashley Aylward, a research manager at the public opinion firm HIT Strategies. “And when they vote, they're voting really based off of issue and candidate rather than party affiliation.” 

She argued Biden has made noticeable strides on issues that young people care about — but that many young people simply aren’t aware of what Biden’s done. 

“We had a recent poll that we did with young voters, and we found particularly it was the Gen Z voters that don't attribute his principles … Biden's priorities, to him. So what that means to us is just that he has a bit of work to do to just get that information out there. And that's probably the next step on his campaign,” Aylward said.  

Biden's reelection campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said the focus is to “meet younger Americans where they are” and mobilize their passion for the issues that impact them.

“Young people are acutely impacted by the issues front and center in this election, driven by the extreme MAGA agenda which cuts costs for corporations but not students in debt, takes away fundamental rights, and fails to protect young Americans from our most urgent threats like gun violence and climate change,” Munoz said. 

Munoz said Biden and Harris “are fighting for the future America's young people deserve, and as Democrats did in 2020 and 2022, we will meet younger Americans where they are and turn their energy into action as part of our winning 2024 coalition.”

The youth voting organization NextGen America has endorsed the Biden 2024 campaign, and its president Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez said they did so “so early” in the race because of the administration’s progressive policies, “not because he’s a Democrat.” 

“I think this is the first election in my lifetime where we're going to see increased and hyper-focus on young voters from Democratic candidates,” Tzintzún Ramirez said. “It is true that young people, a significant percentage, see themselves as independents, but they overwhelmingly vote for Democrats because they care about progressive policy.” 

Still, she acknowledged “there’s a huge portion” of young people that need to be “persuaded” to vote. “And that's what we really see from the Harvard poll, is that young people still need to be told why their vote matters, but they are overwhelmingly progressive in their worldview.”

Questions about young voters also come as Biden faces skepticism over his age. Now 80, he’s the oldest sitting president and would be 86 by the end of a possible second term. 

At age 77, Trump, the GOP front-runner, is just a few years younger than Biden. 

Tzintzún Ramirez noted that, in 2020, the favored candidate for many youth voters was Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is older than Biden.

“It is clear that what young people care about, again, is progressive policy. And that's why, for us, it doesn't matter what Joe Biden's age is — because Donald Trump is no spring chicken either,” Tzintzún Ramirez said. 

Young voters are “very aware” of how old the presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle are, said Aylward. But she argued that age won’t “actually prevent” the voting bloc from backing Biden, given that many of his fellow White House hopefuls are near him in age. 

Aylward said her firm is trying to track young voters who might be interested in casting their vote for a third-party candidate, particularly as Green Party candidate Cornel West has entered the 2024 White House race. 

Looking at young voters who feel less attached to the Democratic party, she sees many pointing to the 2016 presidential election, when some blamed Green Party nominee Jill Stein as a factor that contributed to then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s defeat — saying they want to avoid a situation where a third-party vote “just means an even worse candidate would be put into office.” 

“But we still do see some folks saying that they aren't as enthusiastic for voting in 2024 and that that might lead to them either not participating or considering a third-party vote,” Aylward cautioned.

Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright said he thinks young people will again turn out in the 2024 race, but the Biden campaign must “go above and beyond and educate younger voters” about what the administration has done for them in the last three years, and draw a stark contrast to “existential threats” on the other side. 

“I think they will be helpful all over this country to help save this country,” Seawright said of young voters in the next cycle. 

“But with that being said, I think the Biden campaign, and I think this administration … have to be very intentional about doing education on the legislation, and the implementation about the policies that have come as a result of their vote in the 2020 election and the 2022 midterms because they came out and voted,” he said.