Young voters fed up with older leaders, new poll says
Alexandra Chadwick went to the polls in 2020 with the single goal of ousting then-President Donald Trump. A 22-year-old first-time voter, she saw Joe Biden as more of a safeguard than an inspiring political figure, someone who could stave off threats to abortion access, gun control and climate policy.
Two years later, as the Supreme Court has eroded federal protections on all three, Chadwick now sees Biden and other Democratic leaders as lacking both the imagination and willpower to fight back. She points to a generational gap — one she once overlooked but now seems cavernous.
“How are you going to accurately lead your country if your mind is still stuck 50, 60 or 70 years ago?” Chadwick, a customer service representative in Rialto, Calif., said of the many septuagenarian leaders at the helm of her party. “It’s not the same, and people aren’t the same, and your old ideas aren’t going to work as well anymore.”
While voters across the spectrum express rising doubts about the country’s political leadership, few groups are as united in their discontent as the young.
A survey from the New York Times and Siena College found that just 1 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds strongly approve of the way Biden is handling his job. And 94 percent of Democrats under 30 said they wanted another candidate to run two years from now. Of all age groups, young voters were most likely to say they wouldn’t vote for either Biden or Trump in a hypothetical 2024 rematch.
The numbers are a clear warning for Democrats as they struggle to ward off a drubbing in the November midterm elections.
Young people, long among the least reliable part of the party’s coalition, marched for gun control, rallied against Trump and helped fuel a Democratic wave in the 2018 midterm elections. They still side with Democrats on issues that are only rising in prominence.
But four years on, many feel disengaged and deflated, with only 32 percent saying they are “almost certain” to vote in November, according to the poll. Nearly half said they did not think their vote made a difference.
Interviews with these young voters reveal generational tensions driving their frustration. As they have come of age facing racial strife, political conflict, high inflation and a pandemic, they have looked for help from politicians who are more than three times their age.
Those older leaders often talk about upholding institutions and restoring norms, while young voters say they are more interested in results. Many expressed a desire for more sweeping changes like a viable third party and a new crop of younger leaders. They’re eager for innovative action on the problems they stand to inherit, they said, rather than returning to what worked in the past.
At 79, Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history and just one of several Democratic Party leaders pushing toward or into their 80s. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, is 82. The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, is 83. The 71-year-old Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, is the baby of the bunch. Trump is 76.
In a rematch of the 2020 election, Biden would lead 38 percent to 30 percent among young voters, but 22 percent of voters between 18 and 29 said they would not vote if those candidates were their choices, by far the largest share of any age bracket.
Denange Sanchez, a 20-yearold student at Eastern Florida
State College, from Palm Bay, Fla., sees Biden as “wishy-washy” on his promises.
Sanchez’s mother owns a house-cleaning service and does most of the cleaning herself, with Denange pitching in where she can. Her whole family — including her mother, who has a heart condition and a pacemaker — has wrestled with bouts of COVID-19, with no insurance. Even while sick, her mother was up at all hours making home remedies, Sanchez said.
“Everyone said we were going to squash this virus. Biden made all those promises. And now nobody is taking the pandemic seriously anymore, but it’s still all around us. It’s so frustrating,” she said. Sanchez, who is studying medicine, also counted college debt forgiveness on her list of Biden’s unfulfilled promises.