Biden ahead for young but fewer plan to vote
American President Joe Biden has a healthy lead over Donald Trump among young voters before next year’s presidential election, according to a poll by Harvard University.
However, only 35% of under-30s approved of the job he is doing and his lead over the former president was narrowing.
At 81, Biden is the oldest person yet to occupy the White House. He would be 86 on leaving office in January 2029, should he win next year’s election and serve a full second term.
Trump, 77, is the second oldest man to win a presidential election, aged 70 in 2016, and is odds-on to win the Republican presidential nomination.
Younger voters were key to Biden winning the 2020 election, with the Democrat winning 60% of votes cast by those aged between 18 and 29, compared with 36% for Trump.
Now just over a third of younger voters believe Biden is doing a good job, saying in particular that they have concerns about the direction of the US economy.
The latest poll of young voters for Harvard’s Institute of Politics, published yesterday, still had Biden beating Trump in a head-to-head contest, but his lead had narrowed to 11 percentage points since the 2020 ballot. Just 41% of those under-30 said they would vote for Biden, as opposed to 30% for Trump.
In some recent political polls, Trump has opened up an overall lead over the president in key swing states.
Less than half of young people, 49%, said that they intended to vote in next year’s election, compared with 57% at the same point in the 2020 election campaign cycle. Of those who were likely to vote, 35% said that the economy was their greatest concern. Access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, was also a key issue for most young Americans, while foreign affairs was less of a motivating factor.