President Joe Biden may be facing some headwinds over the next eight months or so of campaigning, but at least as the Democratic nominee he can count on the support of America’s younger voters, right?
Not so fast, according to recent survey data from, of all places, the left-leaning Axios.
Axios teamed with Generation Lab to look at the attitudes of voters aged 18 to 34, and what they found was not good news for Biden.
It might also not be good news for Israel — but I’ll get to that in a moment.
The trend of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 was already looking negative for Democrats according to data from the 2016 to the 2020 presidential elections, with 58 percent favoring former first lady Hillary Clinton in 2016 over then-Republican nominee Donald Trump’s 28 percent, but Trump scoring 35 percent against Biden’s 59 percent in 2020.
That’s according to Pew Research data; in Axios’ 2024 survey, however, Biden, 81, scored a little worse at 52 percent and Trump, 77, came in much stronger with 48 percent — a 4-point gap compared to 2020’s 24-point gap.
The comparison isn’t exactly apples-to-apples, as Axios looked at 18-to-34-year-olds, a slightly larger age range, but there can’t be anyone on Team Biden happy with those numbers.
A number of voters Axios spoke with expressed frustration with their choices at the poll in general, or of their ability to impact their own lives through the political process.
Jessica Gourdet, a 32-year-old restarateur in New Jersey, said she didn’t even plan to vote this year.
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“At this point, I’m tired of stressing about debts and cost of living, and I’m tired of being in a place where I feel like I need to move out of this country to make a change,” she said. “I just don’t believe my vote would make a difference.”
Leaving aside the fact that Jessica is going to be hard-pressed to find another country where her vote counts more than it does in the U.S., her feeling of disempowerment isn’t unique among her generation.
That may be why more than four young voters in 10 don’t consider themselves affiliated with any party at all.
It’s also very important to note the poll’s methodology: “This poll was conducted Feb. 3-14, 2024, via the web, from a representative sample of 1,073 18 to 34-year-olds nationwide. The margin of error is +/- 3.0 percentage points.”
Note that no reference is made to those surveyed being even registered voters, never mind having been screened to determine how likely they are to vote. Axios noted that only 42 percent of the 1,073 claimed that they would “definitely” vote this year, and that among them, 63 percent said they’d vote for Biden, a number much closer to what 2016 and 2020 would lead us to expect.
So, why would this be a problem for Israel? Because some pundits, including New York Times chief political analyst Nate Cohn, think Biden’s losing support among America’s youth because of his support for Israel.
That’s a matter for some debate, of course, but the question is: How true does Team Biden think that is? And if the answer to that question sounds like “mostly,” the next question becomes: What are they planning to do about it?
Of course, that gives rise to yet another question: Would Biden’s advisers push the president into dropping his support for America’s staunchest ally in the troubled Middle East just so that he could win an election?
I’ll refrain from sharing my answer here; the world needs no more evidence of my cynicism. I’ll just leave it open for you, dear reader, to decide for yourself what you think Joe Biden is willing to do to stay in the White House for another four years.
