America’s young people are losing faith in democracy

At this point, it should no longer be surprising that Donald Trump’s supporters are unfazed by anything he says, no matter how outrageous.

My colleague Marianne Levine talked to audience members at a Trump event in Iowa last Wednesday about the former president’s promises that he would govern as a retribution seeking authoritarian if he returns to the White House. They shrugged it off, and more disturbing, some said they would welcome a strongman who tramples democracy.

How much do Americans really care about democracy?

The disturbing answer: Less and less, especially among the young, whose engagement is crucial to Biden’s reelection.

Over the past few decades, there has been “a small but steady erosion of support” for the ideal of democracy, not only in the United States but also around the world, says Eric Plutzer, the political scientist who directs the Mood of the Nation Poll for Penn State University’s Mccourtney Institute for Democracy.

The latest survey, taken in November 2022 and published in January, found that 78 percent of those surveyed said democracy is “the best political system in all circumstances.” But among the Gen Z cohort, ages 18 to 25, nearly half answered either that it “makes no difference” whether they live under a democracy or a dictatorship (28 percent) or that “dictatorship could be good in certain circumstances” (19 percent). More than a third of millennials, ages 26 to 41, agreed with one of those statements.

Plutzer notes that this comports with polls that have asked similar questions, going back to the 1990s. “Young people have always been less enthusiastic about democracy,” he said. “But the generation gap has really exploded.”

Part of the explanation is that younger voters did not live through World War II or the Cold War, when authoritarianism seemed to threaten the survival of the planet. Instead, they have experienced a gridlocked political system that has been incapable of delivering solutions to the problems that most affect their lives, whether it’s climate change or school shootings or the fact that many are not able to buy a home with

the ease their parents did.

It’s true that the Jan. 6, 2021, ransacking of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters to overturn the most recent presidential election has made it clear what happens when the basic processes of democracy are undermined. But for Americans, including the young, who are less engaged and more disillusioned with the political system, the implications of what Trump is talking about — such as weaponizing the Justice Department against his enemies and ordering mass firings of civil servants — seem hypothetical and abstract.

That said, we have also seen recently how concrete issues can bring younger voters to the fore. In Ohio’s November elections, a CNN exit poll found they gave far stronger support than their elders for making abortion a protected right in their state constitution and for legalizing the recreational use of marijuana.

A Biden campaign official said the president’s team understands that democracy becomes a potent issue only when voters understand it in the context of having their rights taken away, as has already happened with abortion, thanks to the Trump-appointed justices on the Supreme Court.

“It’s an exercise in storytelling,” he told me.

Trump is also telling a story. He could hardly be clearer about what he will try to do. Democracy might be looking ragged these days, but Americans should take seriously their responsibility to preserve what’s left of it.