Concerns pile up for young voters on Biden-Trump race

The first time Lucy VanDyke voted for president, she reluctantly supported Joe Biden. But she says she won’t be doing that again.

Like many young voters, VanDyke, a 23-year-old independent from Grand Rapids, Mich., is unhappy with Biden’s stewardship of the economy and his support for Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, and she has concerns about his age. Should Biden face former President Donald Trump again, VanDyke said, she would support a third-party candidate.

“I don’t want a Biden-Trump rematch,” said VanDyke, a mental health research assistant. “I know people can say, ‘Your voice doesn’t matter if you vote independent.’ But the more that people vote independent, even if that candidate doesn’t win, it shows that people are unhappy.”

That discontent with the party front-runners appears to be shared by many young voters, according to recent polling, and it poses a considerable threat to Biden’s reelection effort. A December poll from The New York Times and Siena College found Trump leading Biden among voters ages 18 to 29, which could indicate a stunning erosion of support for the president with a core part of his coalition. In 2020, young people showed up to vote in record numbers and backed Biden by more than 20 percentage points.

Losing support to Trump or third-party candidates isn’t Democrats’ only concern with young voters. Experts say the party needs to worry about a distaste for a Biden-Trump rematch depressing turnout.

The Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School found last month young people appear less inclined to vote than they did at the same point of the 2020 cycle, decreasing from 57% who “definitely” planned to vote in 2019 to 49% last month.

The institute’s director of polling, John Della Volpe, said the results suggested young voters had less faith “in government’s ability to solve big problems,” which could dent participation. The Harvard poll found a plurality of young people trusted neither Biden nor Trump on key issues, including the Israel-Hamas conflict, climate change and gun violence.

Combating an “overall despair” with the political system, Della Volpe said, would require better messaging on how the Biden administration had made a difference on issues like student loan cancellation and environmental protections. “To really motivate young people, it’s about impacting their attitude, showing them that the system can work and has worked,” he said.

Convincing young people the system is working, however, is a daunting task. In interviews with nearly two dozen voters younger than 30, some described the country’s political climate as “scary,” “disheartening,” “not in a good place” and “pretty depressing.”

The majority expressed worries about their economic futures, citing difficulties in affording homes and paying off student loans. Some were concerned about rising polarization. For left-leaning voters, abortion access, gun violence and climate change remain pressing concerns the Biden administration has had mixed results in addressing.

“I just feel like he hasn’t done anything,” said Maurisa Golden, 26, a student and small-business owner in South Carolina. “He’s managed to make a really big moment for young voters feel like nothing.”

Golden said growing up, she had viewed Biden and former President Barack Obama as “superheroes” because of their pitches to Black voters and was excited to support him in 2020. But she wants the president to better address abortion rights, forgive more student loan debt and support policing reforms.