Young voters’ shift from Biden to Trump opens opportunities for base jumpers

Democrats have traditionally been able to bank on three major voting blocs backing them at the ballot box — however, President Joe Biden may not have that luxury this time around. Trump has made significant inroads with the black and Latino communities, as well as young voters, all of which are seeing significant shifts away from their traditional Democratic Party home. If Biden cannot turn the tide, his path to victory in 2024 becomes much more narrow — and in some crucial swing states, almost impossible. In this series, Base Jumpers, the Washington Examiner looks at each of those three bases in detail. Piece three is about young voters.

When it comes to driving out the vote of young people in the 2024 election, President Joe Biden may be his own worst enemy — possibly leaving the historically blue voting bloc on the table ahead of his November rematch against former President Donald Trump.

Biden has faced fierce backlash from young voters over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, and organized protest vote efforts against the president in recent Democratic state primaries have raised concerns about his reelection effort.

Biden also faces headwinds from other key voting demographics that he carried in 2020, including black and Latino voters, likely making young voters showing up for him in November even more important to his reelection bid.

An average of 1 in 10 Democratic voters have opted to cast their vote as “uncommitted” in state presidential contests, according to the New York Times. In states where an “uncommitted” vote was not an option, 12% of voters opted for a minor Democratic candidate.

A recent Axios-Generation Lab poll also found that 58% of voters ages 18-34 aren’t even sure they will vote in the November election, a worrying sign for Biden as Generation Z and millennial voters favored him by about 20 points in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.

Biden’s struggles to connect with the voting bloc could give Trump an opportunity in the general election. Recent polling shows Biden has lost support from the crucial voting bloc, and in some cases, shows Trump leading the president with younger voters.

Trump led Biden 37% to 33% among voters under 35 in a USA Today-Suffolk poll released earlier this year. Trump also beat Biden in swing states by 47% to 40% with voters ages 18-34 in a recent Bloomberg News-Morning Consult poll.

The polls could be outliers. However, evidence suggests Biden’s lead over Trump with the voting bloc has narrowed significantly compared to 2020.

Trump’s hold on the Republican base has also continued to grow since he first won the Republican nomination in 2016, and for Gen Z Republicans, “all you know is Donald Trump,” said John Conway, a Republican strategist.

“You came to political consciousness within, you know, kind of the last decade, you don’t have really an understanding of the Republican Party existing before Donald Trump,” Conway said.

According to Nesho, who was also a co-director of a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll released in February that found while Biden led Trump by 9% among voters ages 18-24, 22% of young voters surveyed were undecided on who they planned to support in the 2024 election.

But when asked who they were leaning toward voting for, 55% of the undecided group broke for Trump while 45% went for Biden.

“That 22% who are undecided can tip the election one way or another, and they’re breaking for Trump,” Nesho said. “So again, the trend is a worrying trend for Biden’s reelection effort.”

Biden’s 9-point advantage over Trump in the poll is a significant shrink from his 20-point advantage in 2020. And with Trump pulling in a larger portion of the young undecided voters, Biden’s lead has the potential to shrink even further, according to Nesho.

“Overall, the story is not so much that these young voters have settled on Trump, but rather it’s their disappointment with Biden,” said Nesho, who explained the result was largely driven by “economic frustrations.”

“A majority of 6 in 10 also believe Trump has committed crimes and view him as a threat to democracy,” Nesho said.

Democratic strategist Brad Bannon isn’t convinced either that young voters’ anger toward Biden will keep them from voting for him in November, saying that Trump being the GOP nominee will do the work of energizing young voters for Biden.

Bannon pointed to issues such as abortion and LGBT rights as reasons why he doesn’t believe young voters will go for Trump in 2024 as well, saying that from what he has seen “in the Trump campaign, they seem to be doing everything they can to alienate voters under 30.”

Conway also doesn’t foresee Trump peeling away younger voters from Biden.

“Donald Trump is just such a turnout machine for Democrats,” Conway said. “Even in the focus groups, right, these voters, they might not like Joe Biden, they certainly hate Donald Trump more. So Donald Trump isn’t winning over these voters.”

“I’ll reiterate while things don’t look great for Biden right now, you know, I don’t want to say that Biden is in trouble with these voters,” Conway said.

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Voters on both sides have long expressed dissatisfaction over a Biden and Trump rematch, with only about a quarter of voters being excited about either’s reelection, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released in March.