President Joe Biden’s approval ratings have undergone a significant drop since the start of his tenure, especially when it comes to young voters.
An Economist/YouGov poll published this week found that Biden has an overall approval rating of 41 percent, with 50 percent of Americans disapproving of his job performance as president. Among voters between the ages of 18 and 29, however, there’s an even wider gap — 50 percent within that age bracket also disapprove of Biden’s job performance, but only 27 percent say they currently approve.
While a few other age groups surveyed in the poll have a higher disapproval rating for Biden, the net approval-disapproval rating of -23 among voters under the age of 30 is the most significant among all age brackets, the poll found.
The plunge in Biden’s approval rating among younger voters over the past year is drastic. From the time he first entered office in January to this week’s poll, Biden’s approval rating in that age group has gone down by 50 points.
Biden’s ability to secure the votes of young people was driven in large part due to their disdain for former President Donald Trump, The Economist noted. Indeed, Biden led Trump by 24 points in the 2020 presidential race among voters 18-29 years old.
But according to The Economist, Biden’s failure to impress young people while in office may pose a threat to his presidency.
“The precise reason for the decline is hard to nail down,” said G. Elliott Morris, a data journalist for The Economist. “It’s most likely that there’s a confluence of factors that make Biden appear as not progressive enough for young adults (which is probably true?) that have driven down their views of him as the contrast vs Trump wanes.”
Biden’s failure to deliver on key promises he made to young voters during his 2020 presidential campaign may be one of the reasons his poll numbers are plummeting.
“If only young voters were telling Biden exactly what they want that he could do without congressional action,” the People for Bernie Twitter account wrote regarding the numbers.
In other words, Biden’s refusal to provide debt relief to tens of millions of Americans with outstanding student loans — which economists say he could do right now, without congressional approval — may be a major reason behind his declining support. While Biden has delivered some student loan relief to individuals with disabilities or those who have been defrauded by creditors, he has largely ignored a campaign promise he made last year to cancel at least $10,000 of student loans per person
When asked about this promise last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Biden was waiting for congressional action. The president would be “happy” to reduce loans by that rate, she said, as soon as a bill is passed by Congress and sent to his desk. Of course, as long as the Senate filibuster remains in place, there is an extraordinarily low chance that this will ever happen.
It’s also possible that Biden faces heat from young voters due to his plan to end the student loan payment pause that was implemented early in the pandemic. Payments are set to restart in February, a move that the administration has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about; the White House recently went as far as to call restarting student loan payments a “high priority.”
“I’m angry at Biden backtracking on a key pillar he ran on: cancellation [of student debt], said Debt Collective member Wen Zhuang. “I’m fearing what the end of [the] moratorium will do for so many people.”
It’s also possible that Biden’s “Build Back Better” initiative is influencing his low approval rating among young people. Initially touted as a transformative spending plan, the initiative has been watered down tremendously. The proposal originally included a number of programs that would help young families — including free universal pre-K, programs to make childcare more affordable, a national paid family and medical leave program, and an extension of monthly child tax credit payments. But a number of those items have been removed or substantially reduced in the past several months.
While the House of Representatives passed a Build Back Better bill that would include family and medical leave, for example, right-wing Democrats in the Senate have refused to support the proposal unless other critical elements of the bill are cut out.
The Build Back Better bill’s delay may also be a factor influencing Biden’s low approval rating among young families. December is the final month for child tax credit payments to be issued — but unless the reconciliation package is passed sometime in the next week, it’s unlikely that those payments will continue at the start of the new year.
Biden’s low approval ratings among young voters may have a significant impact on the 2022 midterm elections. In the same Economist/YouGov poll, young voters were split on who they wanted to win next fall, with 30 percent saying they preferred a Democratic candidate and 33 percent saying they would vote for a Republican. Twenty percent said they were unsure.
Without the help of young voters, Biden and Democrats may have slim chances of retaining control of Congress after the midterm races.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.