President Joe Biden has a younger voter problem, particularly with millennials and Generation Z.
But why? What have the Democrats and the Biden Administration gotten wrong about young voters?
If you look at almost any poll over the past year, President Biden has lost significant support among Americans aged 18-34. The drop in young voter support has been most dramatic among young people of color.
Along with the rest of the U.S., Gen Z and millennials’ dissatisfaction with the president grows.
With the midterm elections right around the corner, the dissatisfaction of young voters could help drag down Democrat candidates in what is already predicted to be a struggle.
What can Biden and the Democrats focus on to regain lost ground with young voters? What are the reasons he has lost support?
It’s the economy, again
Inflation remains a top concern among voters, including young ones. The current economic state with soaring inflation is the first time Gen Zers and millennials are experiencing it for themselves.
Inflation, combined with rising debt, rent, and an ultra-hot housing market, the current affordability crisis has been hitting young people especially hard.
Overall, as with older voters, the president is the subject of Gen Z and millennials’ economic fears. They do not believe he will do enough to address the affordability of housing, education, food, and gas prices, to name a few.
Many young voters a progressive president
According to researchers, young people believe the president is unable to keep the dramatic and bold promises he made during the 2020 presidential campaign. Some of those pledges require Congress to act, a complex process with an evenly divided Senate.
However, young voters also believe Biden’s promises to declare a climate emergency and forgive some student debt could be accomplished by executive action.
According to requests from the Washington Post, Biden is looking into canceling at least partial debt by executive order. According to reports, Biden may continue to extend the pause on student loan payments before a final decision is made, perhaps by August.
Young voters distrust government after a poorly managed pandemic
After two years of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, there is still much distrust among young voters. They don’t know what is going on. The government’s tracking of reality and risk has changed, with no pattern or regularity.
While young voters don’t believe Biden has failed on the pandemic, they have seen illnesses and deaths in their families, faced disruptions throughout critical years of early adulthood, and experienced dysfunction in the healthcare system.
The president and his administration began to shift the tone of the federal response from caring for others to everyone fending for themselves. The resulting confusion left many Gen Z and millennial voters dissatisfied with Biden’s performance.
Sense of disappointment continues
The key takeaway when thinking of young voters is a sense of betrayal and disappointment. They have felt cheated by economic, political, and social developments since the 2020 election.
Political activists and pollsters believe that the president’s decline does not have to be irreversible.
Since Biden is still part of the governing party, he may still have time to tackle debt, affordability, inflation, and the pandemic before the midterms.
Suppose Democrats fail to rectify some of the administration’s failures. In that case, experts believe the Democrats will be locked out of power due to lower Democrat turnout and vote-switching in the November midterms.
