The politics of younger voters are less exceptional than they used to be

Consider, for example, new polling from the Harvard Institute of Politics that considers only the views of adults 18-29. Overall, Biden leads former president Donald Trump by eight points, 45 percent to 37 percent. Among registered voters, though, he’s up 13 points — 50 percent to 37 percent. And among those who say they’re most likely to vote, he’s up 19 points. Biden has 56 percent of support and Trump, again, 37 percent.

That Trump doesn’t gain ground as the pool of respondents is narrowed is important. It suggests that indifference to the candidates and voter apathy are linked — and that there’s potentially an opportunity for Biden if his campaign can compel more young Americans to vote.

This comes back to the initial question: What’s the pitch?

Recent YouGov polling conducted for the Economist included a battery of issues on which respondents were asked to offer their opinions. This allows us to see where Americans stand on the election and also how younger (those under 30) voters differ from older ones.

What we find is that there are only a handful of issues to which younger voters ascribe more importance than older ones, whether we’re considering issues respondents identify as the most important (red, below), very important (purple) or at least somewhat important (orange). Younger Americans are more likely to point to jobs and abortion as the most important issue to them, but the gap between younger voters and voters overall is wider when describing climate change or civil rights as very important issues.

The issue that scored the highest in importance to younger Americans? Inflation, same as everyone else.

That holds in the Harvard Youth Poll as well. Its methodology was different, presenting respondents with two options from a lengthy list and asking them to identify which was more important. The issue that was most commonly selected as most important relative to alternatives was, once again, inflation.

By virtue of focusing on younger respondents, the Harvard poll allows a breakdown by gender. You can see that, on several issues, there’s a substantial difference in the views of young men and women, like reproductive rights. The three issues on which there’s the widest difference by gender are three of the most commonly associated with liberal politics: reproductive rights, climate change and gun violence. Young women were at least 10 points more likely to identify those issues as important than were young men.

A key finding in the Harvard poll centers on the divide by gender. Support for Biden is higher among likely voters than among young people overall — but among young men who are likely to vote, his advantage is only six points compared with a 33-point advantage with young women who are likely to vote.

Since 2020, the Harvard Youth Poll has seen the partisan advantage for Democrats evaporate among young men. In 2020, men and women were about 20 points more likely to identify as Democrats than as Republicans. Now, women are 26 points more likely to, while among men, there’s virtually no difference.

(It’s worth noting that Gallup polling of partisan identity shows a rightward shift among young voters that comports with the data above.)

On the issue importance question, the views of young women correlate strongly to the views of young Democrats. The views of young men correlate slightly less strongly to the views of young Republicans.

The question of how Biden appeals to these voters, though, remains unanswered. He’s put a big focus on student loan relief, as you’re probably aware, and it’s the issue on which Harvard found the highest level of approval for Biden from younger Americans. It is also the issue that was least likely to be identified as important in Harvard’s battery. On inflation and gun violence, issues seen as more important, his approval rating was around 25 percent. On the issue of Israel — which was also surprisingly low on the importance list — his approval was under 20 percent.

YouGov found that younger Americans were more critical of Biden across the board than Americans overall, including on education and civil rights, issues that they were more likely to identify as important.

The situation, then, is that the issues important to young people and those important to Americans overall don’t differ that much as Biden’s party has lost ground with young men. (A plurality of young men in the poll identified as independent.) Analysis from Pew Research Center found that voters under 30 backed Biden by a 26-point margin in 2020, down from the 30-point margin Hillary Clinton enjoyed four years before. If the margin had instead matched that seen in this poll — 19 points — it would have meant a shift of more than 4 million votes from Biden to Trump.

Convincing younger voters to turn out to vote for him in November, in other words, is of significant importance to Biden’s campaign. It seems safe to say, at this point, that he’ll have better luck focusing on young women than young men.