Less young people are identifying as Democrats and this has some Biden supporters worried that they won’t show up to vote for him in 2024.
These young voters are not becoming Republicans, they are becoming independents. Far left, progressive independents.
The Democrat party has been headed for this split for a decade or more. The Bernie/AOC wing of the party does not identify with the establishment wing.
Politico reports:
Young voters are getting less likely to identify as Dems. It spells trouble for Biden.
Joe Biden’s Gen Z whisperer has a warning for the president: Get going on addressing youth enthusiasm now, or it may be too late.
John Della Volpe, one of the Biden 2020 campaign pollsters, has issued these admonitions in briefings with the president’s reelection team and in conversations with top White House aides.
Having analyzed youth voter data for more than two decades, he told West Wing Playbook that voters under 30 today are less likely to identify as Democrats compared to spring 2019. More consider themselves independents, and fewer see politics as a “meaningful way to create change.”
The last three cycles saw historic levels of youth participation — and the cohort is as progressive as ever — but if these voters stay home in 2024 as a result of these shifts in attitudes, Della Volpe said, it could doom the incumbent president and Democrats.
“I feel like it’s a responsibility to ring this alarm now, when there’s time to do something about it,” said Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. “These voters gotta buy into the values of the party and the candidates … and to appreciate the fact that politics can make a difference. You can’t do that in a full-week ad buy after Labor Day.”
Biden has tried to placate these voters with policies on climate change and other progressive pet issues but it’s never enough.
In 2020, Biden scored a narrow Electoral College victory with a decisive assist from young voters.
But as the president looks beyond his first term, many young voters are not satisfied, presenting a fresh challenge. https://t.co/gqC2Zo4TFd
— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 11, 2023
Expect the Biden team to respond to this by pushing ideas even further to the left.
