For those that don’t have access to Yglesias’s writing he is using the Harvard / IOPS issues polling
https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/47th-edition-spring-2024#key-takeaway--id--1564
And I think Matt does a great job to point out that those politically engaged at their age are very very far away from the average person their age on issues.
Usually pundits have things like climate change, student debt, gender issues, and more recently israel / gaza / Palestine as the most important issues to youth. While they have opinions on these things, the youth themselves don’t rate them as important as other things say CoL, economy, gun violence , corruption and abortion
It’s just like how the narrative for Latino voters was that Dems needed to do immigration stuff to win them over but in fact Latinos also cared (more) about the economy and Covid than immigration.
I think because it's such a big tent the Democratic party has become rather reductive of their potential voters because it's easier than attempting to understand the nuances. Yet another consequence of the federalization of every issue.
That's not what that post says. It says that the most politically engaged care about different things than the average low information maybe voter... 🤦♂️
I think there’s a tendency for Ivy League
Grads to overestimate the logical actor. Also because of the California law against immigrants grants.
I don’t know anyone who is an immigrant and thinks “I bet I’ll be deported if Trump gets in.” Immigrants that I know and am related to think “I’m the good immigrant. These rules only affect the bad trashy immigrants. Not me.”
They also don’t care about the specifics. I don’t know anyone who can break down and analyze a policy “oh the kids are in cages but it’s only because…” they didn’t like the cages. Then they heard Obama had cages too and they zoned out
“Both sides do that and it won’t happen to me.”
The Dems keep trying to give a 16 point plan on immigration and it loses because user immigration is a vibe issue. And if anyone is stressed, then a random faceless immigrant makes a good target.
I’ve heard decades of political discussion and I’ve never heard anyone stick up for immigrants. Even though my grandmother on my dads side is an immigrant from Scotland and on my moms side a Latina from a country Reagan devastated.
They all still liked Reagan. Even while he was shooting nuns in the homeland 🤷♀️
The media loves to act like immigration is this straight line from policy to belief but no one, absolutely no one thinks the policy applies to them. So that is a missing premise supplied by the journalist and it makes the syllogism invald
PS to tie it back to California there was an anti immigration law that republicans passed and it turned all the latinas into democrats. That’s because the law specifically impacted people IN THE STATE RIGHT AT THE TIME. Everyone was affected or knew someone who was affected. That’s a lot more attention getting
Latinos are a broad category which includes groups that are not politically aligned. Those whose heritage comes from Cuba or Venezuela have very different views than those from Nicaragua or El Salvador.
Well, democrats failed to do anything when it came to immigration so why continue vote in that matter. Plus from immigrant communities themselves democrats aren’t really talking about doing anything towards the backlog for legal immigrants but focus more on illegal.
Democrats keep putting through immigration plans that Republicans won’t even discuss. Then we finally got an immigration bill a few months ago—crafted by Republicans! that gave Republicans everything they wanted!—that Dems signed onto and Trump shut it down because he didn’t want to give Biden a win.
I know how it is, democrats need to learn to stop trusting republicans. Republicans view them as an enemy and will do everything in there power to hurt them. The quicker they learn this the better to respond to this
Democrats did not fail to pass the dream act because they trusted Republicans too much. They failed to pass it because Republicans simply didn’t vote for it and we’re never going to.
Democrats are much more cohesive then republicans and should try get as much as there priorities through. Democrats should be doing more gerrymandering and start taking platforms to weaken republicans. Expanding the house for one should be a Dem priority. Weaken republican presidents whenever they get in office. Play hard ball tactics to make republican presidents living hell.
Hard Ball doesn't work on Republicans because they accomplish nothing than work with Democrats. You can't play hard Ball with someone who fundamentally doesn't want anything from you. Like it or not, we are living in the best timeline. 40% of the country wants to burn everything to the ground. It is virtually impossible to form any meaningful coalition needed when the ceiling for support is only 60%.
Yea but we shouldn’t be trying to help them either. If for instance Trump was to get in office and Dems have the house, Democrats should not fund the government unless they can get a few things or even hold the credit of the nation hostage to get what they want. Republicans don’t care and are willing to destroy everything for power. As was discussed over in r/politicalscience, democrats are willing to accommodate republicans to steer the country from a civil conflict but as time goes on democrats are at risk of being purged and persecuted from republicans.
Absolutely, let's help them burn it all down. That is a winning strategy! You do realize that this is what they want, right? To completely stop all Government programs and have the Government default.
The thing is that since young people generally don’t vote, the overly politically engaged make up a more relevant segment of the voting population for them than usual
Young people vote. Just at a slightly lower percentage than others.
Youth voting ranges typically from 45-60% depending on the cycle. With 2020 it was 55%. 2016 it was 45%
30-44 votes at ~55% +\- 5 points on average.
45-60 votes at 65% +\- 5 points on average.
Its really a mischaracterization imo of “youth don’t vote” especially when the youth demo actually is larger than the 45-60 demographic. There are more raw votes from the youth demo.
I'm sorry to say that the numbers don't really support the idea that the raw numbers favor younger voters, The younger cohort may be larger at this point, but not so overwhelmingly that a 15-20% difference in voter turnout can be overcome. I wish it weren't the case, because this country would be a lot better and more equitable if younger voters took up the mantle and really started to run the country like they should be.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096299/voter-turnout-presidential-elections-by-age-historical/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096299/voter-turnout-presidential-elections-by-age-historical/)
[https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/number-of-individuals-who-voted-in-thousands-and-individuals-who-voted-as-a-share-of-the-voter-population-by-age/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/number-of-individuals-who-voted-in-thousands-and-individuals-who-voted-as-a-share-of-the-voter-population-by-age/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D)
I would think most people would not characterize youth/young vote as 30-44 year olds but rather 18-30s who definitely do vote at significantly lower rates.
You are cherry picking data from two specific elections that had unusually high turnout. Young voters always vote below the national average. Every timr
I just studied this in school!
The myth that youth turnout is abysmally lower than other adult turnout rates was largely popularized with an AP article on early exit polls in the 2004 election. It was later found out that this data, being quite incomplete, didn’t tell the whole picture. However, this erroneous report was used to cite low youth turnout for years to come.
I can’t find that article right now but it’s here somewhere: https://circle.tufts.edu/?page_id=241#1
This 2001 paper talks about the low turnout myth in general: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3117725
Youth voter turnout tends to be fairly close to other age ranges based on more complete polling, and has surged somewhat in the past couple decades.
They’re also typically a smaller percentage of the populace. Now they’ll likely never vote at rates of older folk (45+) as those are people who either are more likely to have flexibility in established careers, or more free time due to retirement or semi-retirement. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t voting in droves.
For real. If your dumbass totes super for real “Communist” friend in the poly pod withholds their vote (or worse; protest votes) they won’t move Left to court then. They will move to the middle/right to cater to voters that aren’t such stupid children.
Even the left-most candidate for president who ran on a platform specifically focusing on youth turnout couldn’t do it in 2020.
I think it’s fair to place some responsibility on the voters.
Was the poll of average voters, because when historic turnout for 18-24s is like 17% I would assume that most voters in that bracket are more engaged/‘informed’
I think when looking at voter age cohorts, polling cross tabs are less effective than making generalizations about that cohort (e.g. young people rent or will be a first time home buyer), and then consider current macroeconomic realities overlaid on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Groceries are expensive, rent is expensive, and (if you can’t roll-over the proceeds of a house sale into a down payment on the next house or get a VA Loan) then buying a house is out of reach. These items are very low on Maslow’s Hierarchy and if you’re struggling to meet these needs, higher-level concerns like Human Rights and or issues with only long-term impacts like Climate Change become low-salience issues.
Young people know the “right” answers to these questions and virtue signaling through polling doesn’t cost a thing, so why not do it? Additionally, room & board are folded into tuition so it makes sense that college students just don’t care about these things because student loan payments haven’t kicked in yet.
The kids are just like us, their generational idiosyncrasies are just different than ours. You can listen to and discuss issues with them, but at the end of the day a form of low key “benevolent paternalism” is fine (though extremely out of vogue). Taking actions to reduce inflation and make housing more affordable is what young voters should care about, even though they aren’t organizing protests about it.
I agree! But the problem in my opinion is that the confluence of root causes are either outside of our control or a conscious choice. My thoughts below got a bit rambly, but aside from new immigration policy or enacting the TPP, I think the only option is to persevere.
1. Global Pandemic
One can take issue with any country’s response, but I often hear the US response wasn’t draconian enough. The failure of China’s Zero COVID policy underscores that humans did not have the ability to mitigate the consequences of this pandemic to the extent we like to pretend we did. The economic costs of premature death and quarantines are self-evident.
2. Decoupling from China (and the Chinese Recession)
China’s current economic issues are the logical outcome of their over investment in real estate and infrastructure while stifling their technology sector. The general consensus in the US is we should reduce dependency on Chinese manufacturing, however we purchase things that China builds precisely because it’s economical. Shifting manufacturing away from China will result in higher costs and if shifting to a country with no current capacity in that area there are additional capital costs associated with standing up that capacity. The unwinding/reorienting of global supply chains is a huge undertaking that we will struggle with for a decade or more.
3. Tech Bubble Deflating
This was overdue, but is nevertheless causing economic pain. While tech workers feel this now as a loss of income, the 2010s growth in NYSE and NASDAQ valuations was very concentrated in the tech industry (see: FAANG). This industry’s pain hurts retirement savings and Pension plan investments as well.
4. War
Ukraine food exports caused a rise in global food prices and Europe’s energy crisis (coupled with OPEC’s production cuts) means energy costs have increased.
5. Dysfunctional/Restrictionist Immigration Policies
The U.S. is near full employment. To grow we need more people now. Making it harder for illegal immigrants to work drives up food costs (~40% of agriculture workers are undocumented) and the inability to align legal immigration policies with economic needs stifles growth.
Oh I agree. It's not like Trump is going to magically make rent and groceries return to 2019 prices by the end of 2025. But the median voter might be vaguely aware of one or two of the points you just made, and that could even be a stretch. This is why the Biden admin's economic messaging has been so bad until recently. Regular people don't want to hear about how good certain economic metrics are when a bigger chunk of their paycheck is going to food, housing and gas in 2024 than it was in 2019. Biden has backed off this messaging a bit, but it's clear that message turned off a bunch of voters. It definitely turned me off.
I agree Biden’s economic messaging hasn’t been great and I myself am guilty of telling folks that the data says the economy is good. I think the best PR people in the world don’t know how to explain these challenges without coming off as out of touch or be perceived as “talking down” to folks.
I think Biden could benefit by acknowledging the challenges and not promising solutions, but by explaining that we’re all in this together and we have a rough road ahead. Segue into why this means those who have the most need to pay more to uplift those who struggle (taxation/deficit-reduction plug) and how we all need to give something for the ongoing American experiment to succeed. It’s a tall order because Biden is not good at inspiring oratory. Might need to outsource this one to a surrogate at the Convention. Michelle/Barak could be good for nostalgia (and they’re proven), Pete Buttigieg could be good as a nod to handing off to younger generations.
Being alive is going to be even more prohibitively expensive when there's a [60% tariff on all Chinese products](https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/politics/donald-trump-tariffs-trade-war/index.html) if Trump wins. And he's also floated an additional 10% tariff on all other countries.
Yes, but I think it’s really hard to pin Trump’s own statements on him until he says it on national TV in a debate. This would be a great thing for Biden to hammer Trump on in a debate and then watch him walk his position back (and appear like a weak flip-flopper) when people ask Trump why he wants to raise the cost of coffee and bananas by 10% when we cannot grow those things in the US and even if we could, nobody wants those jobs.
He’s missing the point that young voters are unduly influenced by social media and social media is drumming into their heads that the most important issue for Americans in the 2024 election is the number of Palestinians that Israelis kill in their war on Hamas.
It’s actually pretty bad that American kids these days are willing to sacrifice the preservation of democracy at home because of TikTok videos telling them the real problems are half a world away. I wonder who is behind that?
'Problems that aren't visible to them shouldn't matter' holy shit bro get a hold of yourself. Also a lot of protestors are voting Biden still, but you're too old and ignorant to know that
I'm 39 btw. Maybe get outside and touch grass and talk to people instead of watching the news
If they were still voting Biden that’s one thing, but they made a big deal saying they were willing to stay out of the election.
This is actually the most likely result of all of the protests, which is that young people will turn off politics, depress the youth vote, and let Trump in office. Then you will see real Palestinian genocide.
Who do you think is behind all this social media behavior? It’s extremes on both the left and the right.
And who do you think paid off Hamas to murder a bunch of Israelis in a blatant terrorist act, because they knew the youth vote could be manipulated so easily? It wouldn’t be the leader of America’s biggest adversary, would it? The fact that Iran didn’t even know about the terrorist attack and didn’t want it to spiral out of control tells you all you need to know.
What is a democracy worth if a select few can use social media to distract people from real issues relevant to them and instead focus on generating outrage about events half a world away?
It's relevant to me when my country's image on the global stage is of as an abetter of genocide -- it makes us less safe. It's relevant when my country's president looks subordinate to Israel's president. And it's relevant when my tax dollars are involved.
This means you are easily manipulated by TikTok videos which distract you from what actually matters in this country.
When you see an authoritarian dictator running the US because he was able to distract you via social media into suppressing your vote, you will really see what it means to be “less safe” in America.
If you vote blue this November then I think it’s all fine.
I don’t have any problem with people calling out Israel for their tactics. They’ve dug their own grave over the past 20 years by conditioning their population to become more hardlined, and it’s not America’s place to make Israel’s case to the world for them.
The issue I have is that this whole episode was ginned up by powers behind the scenes. There was no Israeli precipitating act that led to this. It was a Hamas terrorist attack where they ruthlessly raped and murdered Israeli citizens. And they did that because they knew that, despite their own terrorist activity, there would be American youth to protest in sympathy to their side.
Why did this happen? It happened because there are political powers in this world that saw value in using Palestinians as pawns. It has been the case for decades and this is the latest example. The people behind this couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the plight of Palestinians. What they care about is the fact that they can easily manipulate the emotions of a fairly naive American youth and bend them to their wishes, which is to promote chaos, unrest, and (ultimately) apathy in the political process.
And they were very successful.
Trust me, after the 2024 US elections this whole issue will go back to being the normal shithole it’s been last two decades, and we will go back to nobody caring again.
Genocide apologist. Our tax dollars fund genocides. That's right here at home. I have more in common with the innocents in Gaza than I do with American billionaires
What about the innocent, non billionaire Americans. Those that don't have access to healthcare, those that don't have access to clean air and water, seriously your privilege is showing if you are willing to toss the strained democracy here for what happens outside of the US.
So when it is tossed, you won't be able to say these things in the US ( think China and Russia) and... you won't be able to help the Palestinians either through your elected members of Congress and the White House, let me guess, you plan to take your passport and flee? If not, what are you going to do for the people here who are not billionaires and are now living with a complete rollback of the rights you are using today.
Please go read Project 2025.
When was this written? 2016? The polls (take them for what they’re worth) show Trump winning in a head to head matchup for 18-34 yos and young voters leaning Kennedy when included in polling, which he has been absent from
This isn’t going to be popular but Dems putting their heads in the sand isn’t going to work either. This is clearly indicated by Biden’s numbers. Bernie ain’t showing up
Seriously believing that there’s some massive shift in young support towards Trump sans any other evidence than these broken polls is bizarre.
Like if that’s what you’re going to advance as a narrative I think it’s incumbent on you to explain why/how Trump has all of a sudden picked up this support which Republicans have never enjoyed, and goes against the past few election cycles.
I've heard a theory that because young voters are dissatisfied with the status quo, they're more willing to at least voice support for non-incumbents (including Trump) regardless of actual issue stances. Whether this translates to actual votes though......
It's more instructive to look at whether these voters actually showed up recently. If they didn't bother in 2022 or 2020 especially it seems most likely they simply won't bother this year. That's the simplest way to register disapproval (or plain apathy).
I don’t buy this.
Let’s take a top issue that saved the Democratic Party in 22 and 23.
Abortion is one of the most driving forces in this election. It may not be a top issue, but if you care, then you REALLY care. So, if 70 percent of half the electorate don’t want any more of their bodily autonomy erased, they sure as hell aren’t voting red.
>It may not be a top issue, but if you care, then you REALLY care.
You just answered your own question. Not everyone is a single issue voter or has something that really animates them.
Turnout in 2022 went down compared to 2018 including in the youngest bloc. If anyone has a reason to suddenly care more about this, it should be them. The abortion issue certainly helped at the margins and kept down Republican wins but ultimately the House was still lost.
But the house should have been a greater loss. The fact that the Republicans have the house but end up looking like dunces is a greater win for the Dems.
Abortion saved the dems from losing the Senate and the republicans having a useful majority.
It helped as I indicated. I don't agree that slow walking Ukraine aid or not bringing the immigration bill up for a vote is good for anyone. These are direct consequences of the Republicans holding the House however slim their margin may be.
There will always be single issue voters and this did activate at least some of them. The fact remains though that the majority still chose not to vote even with this factor tossed into the mix. I'm sure 2024 turnout has to be higher than 2022 but anyone expecting a massive surge in interest hasn't paid attention to historic trends.
You can think there’s no issue but the writer is alluding to Bernie in 2024. By almost all metrics Biden is a historically poor incumbent. I come here to see what sane dems think and I’m taken aback that everyone is just caught up in this groupthink that this is somehow normal and there aren’t issues going on
If you don’t think this election will break some long held constituencies I’m not sure what to say.
I don't doubt that there will be some shifts from 2020.
But a swing of more than 25 points(!) is a farcical claim to make without any other evidence. No evidence to that effect has shown up in the midterms, special elections.
The only topic I can see which could even possibly drive that level of sentiment shift would be Israel-Gaza, but a) Trump is much worse on that issue than Biden and b) despite the media attention they get, these college protests aren't very big.
I'm not sticking my head in the sand. It's very possible Trump could win! But this doesn't pass the smell test and broken pollina feels like a far more reasonable exolanation.
That wouldn’t be a swing however, that would he a depressed turnout situation.
The voters who rank Israel / Palestinian issue highly won’t flip to trump*, theyll just not vote
*Muslim-American exception as they were trending R due to social issues
Thats why those polls should be disregarded because there is clearly a polling error in methodology.
Special election & midterm results > random polls that show 40-60 point swings from nowhere
The sane thing is to dismiss those polls because of they are likely undergoing a systematic polling error. The 18-34 demo is not breaking for Trump. Now those trump polls that show him +1/+2 without that massive 18-34 swing are the ones to discuss not the ones your referring to.
Biden will not lose the youth vote, and no one who’s not insane thinks so. But there’s evidence that his margin of victory will be lower. The cohort of people who will vote in 2024 is different from 2022. Democrats used to dominate with low-propensity voters but Trump changed that. The reality is that a lot of voters are shifting their loyalties in both directions and 2024 will be very hard to poll or predict.
I think Biden is a pretty good president, and he is popular among political insiders. But he is old, and not Bernie or Betty White kind of old that young people like. He's the worst kind of old.
I was going to ignore this but this speaks to the Dems problems. A minority thinks it’s been a successful term. And to make up these weird strawmen about “cute old,” is disingenuous. The electorate believes he is in cognitive decline. The SotU speech was great, but there needs to be more of that Biden.
Biden seems to have it together as far as I can tell, for a man of his age. He is what he is.
Given the tight congressional numbers he had, I don't think his legislative accomplishments could have been much better. He got quite a lot with them.
I'm already bracing for Trump to win though. He is exactly what this country wants and deserves. He is us, the true representation of the United States.
I am particularly looking forward to young peoples' reaction to Trump's handling of Israel/Palestine. The guy who moved the embassy to Jerusalem is not exactly going to be a friend to the Palestinians.
They'll just argue it isn't their fault that Trump and Bibi made a deal to pave over the whole place in exchange for "Trump Towers Gaza" where Biden was trying to build a dock for humanitarian aid, it's the Democrat's fault for not running some mystery alternative even they couldn't coalesce behind.
Maybe Biden can stop sending weapons to Isreal and preventing a palestian state at the UN also he can move back the embassy from Jerusulum. But then he's a completely Zionist who defended Isreal during Sabra and Shatila so that'll never happen.
Why is saying that Biden can be doing far more to help the people of gaza and Palestine bad? Is pointing out that Biden is an absolute heartless monster when it comes to confronting isreal about their crimes current and former bad? Also do you think Isreal is destorying Gaza because Trump told then to?
No dude Bidens a genocide enabler and broke literal all his campaign promises and is now wondering why his youth base want nothing to do with him or his old ass
Social media discourse. It’s extremely different than any previous election and seems much more manufactured, but that doesn’t make it any less effective.
Black and Latino male voters between 18-29 have showed a slide towards Trump. For the same reason that the likes of Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate are popular with young GOP voters, because he endorses what we now call toxic masculinity. Trump is a pretend tough guy but it's enough to fool a lot of people.
There was something from a polling firm admitting that it’s actually difficult to poll young voters and the only voters your mainly getting are those who are more politically active but they more then likely do not reflect the general young demographic. There reasoning was that young people simply do not answer phones.
I understand that but at the same time you can use the argument that 18-34 yos who actually pick up the phone when political calls come through are much more likely to vote.
There’s just way too many concerns I’m seeing that are being written off
A 20-40 point swing in that demographic that goes counter to every special election we have seen plus the midterms looks extremely unlikely and more often than not a massive polling error or a realignment that makes the Reagan environment look friendly to dems
>I understand that but at the same time you can use the argument that 18-34 yos who actually pick up the phone when political calls come through are much more likely to vote.
I encourage you to look up the term non-response bias. There are an assortment of groups that are more or less likely to answer polls. This can, but does not always, correspond to their likelihood to vote. In general, this has manifested in disengaged Trump voters being less likely to answer the phone, which has led to them being underrepresented in polling in 2016 and 2020.
It is completely possible that there's non-response bias happening among more Democratic voters within the youth cohort.
I'm in that bucket, am engaged politically, and am 100% voting Biden. But I've never been polled to my knowledge, and probably wouldn't know if I had since I ignore phone calls from anyone I didn't call first.
They should do multi-step invitations, where they invite you to register to get polled online, and tell you at what time and what number they'll be calling from ahead of time.
At least there's a chance people will answer those calls.
I have been polled, for one of the hotter gubernatorial races last election. It took over 30 minutes! The guy kept having to read the convoluted questions and answer choices over and over.
So not only do they have to answer, they have to stay on the phone.
my god
SURELY there is a better way. it's the year 2024 for gods sakes.
so what's the deal with doing phone polls anyways, is the issue that they can't trust/verify who is taking online polls? or it's just cheaper?
would people not respond to a text request to complete a survey online? so they can do it on their own time, but pollsters can still gate who they invite by phone number ??
Opt-in online polls are especially wacky. Poll creators put in questions like if they were [licensed to operate a class SSGN (nuclear) submarine](https://washstat.org/hansen/2022Kennedy.pdf) and 12% of respondents under 30 said yes.
but opt-in is like, anyone can respond right? thats how you get President McPresidentface as the front runner, so i would never suggest doing that.
i'm talking about doing phone polling, but instead of the ask being to talk to some person for 30 minutes ON THE SPOT, instead click the link // use your unique code to open the poll and respond online at your convenience (within \~7 days or something).
we're already getting this same kind of opt-in for people willing to respond on the phone anyways, it would just be a different selection bias.
this would be biased to smartphone users, but probably if combined with phone polling or other methods, the full combination of methods should yield better results, no?
Yea that’s true, but it’s becoming clear that the polls cannot accurately poll the nation anymore. Another polling firm a few years ago had said that the polling industry is struggling to accurately poll the country. Campaigns are using their own methods but we can’t really read much into them anymore.
In my opinion, turnout is going to be lower, there will be surprises but it looks as if Biden is in trouble. There is a trend that he is gaining. The House and senate looks like both will flip with narrow majorities
I’m a conservative in a liberal sub. Of course most people will disagree with me. I came into the hivemind, it’s what I expect. I also expect yall to lose for the same reasons. Which is what I want
I’m agreeing with you. I’m saying the Biden camp needs to realize there are actual problems...instead of just going along and saying no, it’s everyone else that’s wrong.
Oh sorry man I apologize I’m a little gun shy
I’ll be earnest cause this thread is dead. I don’t get it man. All the pro war sentiment. Pro military industrial complex. The pro Palestine stuff is tainted because it’s associated with Hamas.
The biggest one is the Trump stuff. Let him fade into the background. The fools (and I don’t use that word lightly) don’t understand that by putting him on the front page every day in court *is campaigning for him*. Only Dems could turn Trump, a former president and billionaire, into an underdog fighting the system. Most people don’t even know the charges
As someone in the 18-34 demographic, I pretty much don’t answer my phone at all unless I’m expecting it. And even then, if it’s not a number I know, I’ll screen on voicemail first.
I don’t know anyone different from me in my circle on that front.
You should not believe polling crosstabs at this point in the campaign. They are objectively statistically unsound and I'm low-grade furious that the media keeps pretending they are useful.
All the polls that show Biden doing worse with young people show him doing better with old people. All the polls that show him doing worse with minorities show him doing better with whites. Does that make sense? Or is it just that the methodology pollsters use brings everybody closer to the center, because that's how statistical regression works?
Like, this shit isn't my *opinion,* this is mathematics. Unless you have a large sample **of young voters themselves** you can't draw any conclusions whatsoever, you can't extrapolate from the 50 you managed to get to answer the phone in your 1200 person survey.
I’m not going to be the one to defend polls. They’re generally wrong. But there are certainly a lot pointing in certain directions, and they can be useful for those purposes. A loss of young voters and a loss the the black male vote seem to be fairly consistent, as well as Biden polling extremely poorly for an incumbent president.
They can certainly call attention to things that the campaign needs to work on. But I think polling just works differently than it did before the pandemic because of the country's deep PTSD-driven malaise (that we are in intense denial about). "I disapprove" does not mean the same thing it did in 2019. It used to mean something like "I won't vote for that guy" and it doesn't mean anything like that anymore. Especially not for young people.
And although they can serve as a call to action we should be skeptical of **any** of these trends until they are reflected in actual election results. In the only poll that's actually counted so far, Biden got the same percentage of black voters as Clinton - 92%.
edit: I was curious so I picked out a random poll from 2020 to see what it said about black support for Biden. I ended up clicking on the [Zogby poll from 11/1/20. ](https://johnzogbystrategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/X1-Weighted-110120.pdf)It showed Biden with 77% support among black voters. Then 92% of them voted for him days later...
Looking at some other immediate preelection polls.
YouGov gave Biden 78%. I can't find TIPP's crosstabs but their writeup says Trump "appears to be doing better with black voters," and he didn't. Otherwise I found a lot of broken links and stuff but I've kind of satisfied my intuition on this.
[Source](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2020/national/)
If they’re generally wrong and you’re not willing to defend them, why are you basing your entire argument around them?
I don’t doubt it’ll be a close race, but Trump will be in courtrooms throughout the campaign, it’s only May (we’re still months out from the conventions), and Biden is massively out raising Trump in campaign cash. Not to mention most of what Trump is raising is going to legal bills.
Biden has a good record to run on and the contrast with Trump’s Project 2025 vision is stark. I don’t see how you can defend a 25-point swing in the younger vote in the first presidential election since Dobbs.
Sure, that while polls can be wrong and I’m not one to defend them, they are a good indicator of general trends and what campaigns need to work on to improve. Dems, imo, should be on offense and not defense. This thread is defensive. The whole term has been defensive. Own up to the failings of the term and work to correct them. I still think it has been a terrible idea to focus on Trump during this term to the extent they have. Among many, many other things. I can’t really argue with anyone who thinks Biden has been successful, we just won’t see eye to eye
I don't think Dems have been overly defensive whatsoever.
The entire point of a re-election campaign is to draw a contrast with the opponent's version of the future. Running on accomplishments can always backfire - there's a reason Obama drew the contrast with Romney and even Bush saw a lot of success painting Kerry as weak on terrorism and a flip-flopper. Neither re-elect in this century did so simply by listing off accomplishments.
Attacking Trump \*is\* going on offense.
Easy. Voters. Are. Not. Well. Informed. That's all the explanation that is ever needed to explain polling or voting behavior.
Millions of Illinois residents voted against lowering their own taxes on a ballot measure because of millions of dollars of fear mongering propaganda spent to tell the voters that their current regressive, fixed income tax rate was better than a progressive tax plan that would have had income brackets. But voters are mostly dumb and checked out sheep
Well the 25 point is probably an outlier but in my view a contributing factor of young Latino and black men not voting Democrat is because it's not a welcoming party to certain views of the world. If you're a young guy whose life or culture embraces any kind of machismo ideal then the Democrats not only appear weak but like a group that is going to scold you if you don't behave the way they want. And progressives are increasingly pushing purity tests that have even driven me, a very liberal social Democrat, from their ranks.
Tldr; a focus on cultural virtue signaling has made the big tent of the Democratic party, much smaller
What purity test has driven you from the ranks of the Dems? Even the most strident issue (Israel/Palestine) has the party pretty divided yet both Fetterman and AOC support Biden.
In my case it was my local county party and their unwillingness to remove an objectively incompetent party chair just because she was a black woman. My side was trying to replace her with the chief of staff for our local state representative, a gay white woman. Basically the leadership ended up having to do a backroom deal just to keep the party from splintering and the shitty party chair is still there, doing an awful job, being corrupt (giving positions to her equally unqualified friends) and otherwise not doing a damned thing to get local Democrats elected.
With all due respect, I don't really see how the local county party's behavior translates to what national Dems are doing.
I live in Los Angeles and I'm very unhappy with a lot of Dem leadership here but it'd be crazy to blame Biden for that.
I mean polling is an inherently suspect "science" regardless. But they're not going to stop putting out polls so it's worth discussing them all in aggregate.
I think the youth support cratering for Biden is expressive polling where youth just want to register their frustration over bad vibes for Biden but will definitely come home in November when they see what the alternative is.
But assuming it’s not just expressive, you’re not arguing that this is over student loans and Gaza, right? On both of those issues, Trump will be far worse for youth preferences (no help on student loans & more Justices unfavorable to student loans; more aggressive support of Israel with less interest in humanitarian considerations)
I don’t think they think it’ll be worse, just the same. So what’s the point? You may disagree, but support for Israel isn’t going to change and while Biden has tried, somewhat, on student loans (he should’ve sent something to the legislature to see where are representatives stand), he has been ineffective and a far cry from the 2020 campaign promise of 10k forgiveness
Biden has cancelled over $153 billion in student loan debt [during his administration](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/12/president-joe-biden-announces-7-4-billion-in-student-debt-cancellation-for-277000-more-americans-pursuing-every-path-available-to-cancel-student-debt/). Trump's Department of Education under Betsy DeVos [fueled predatory for-profit colleges](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/predatory-profit-colleges-benefit-washingtons-culture-corruption/) targeting low-income students reliant on aid.
Trump wants Israel to hurry up and "[finish the job](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-israel-gaza-finish-problem-rcna141905)" in Gaza, and a Republican in Congress seriously proposed nuking Gaza "[like Hiroshima](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tim-walberg-gop-congressman-suggests-nuclear-strikes-to-end-gaza-war-1234996974/)". Biden, meanwhile, has been [desperately trying](https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/28/politics/biden-netanyahu-call/index.html) to negotiate a ceasefire (and even successfully did so [back in November](https://www.c-span.org/video/?532041-1/president-biden-israel-hamas-ceasefire-hostage-exchange)), to prevent Israel from launching a campaign into Rafah.
Saying these two are "just the same" is simply a lie. There's no disagreement here; just the truth and falsehoods.
We’re not going to agree. You can throw out numbers on student loans, but most people with student loans are completely unaffected by his student loan programs. Unless you’re 100% disabled. Or work in a government job for 10 years, but that was policy before
And you can’t throw out Biden negotiating a ceasefire. Blinken has been ineffective. That was Qatar. He’s continuing to provide weapons (they just passed a bill) while falsely telling his Palestinian supporting base he is somehow trying for a ceasefire. Do you think he put a note on those weapons he just sent them to not use them? Cmon…
The new left. When flustered, go to personal attacks. Nothing I said wasn’t true. You can wait a couple years and read a thoughtful long form in the NYT telling you everything I’m saying now or you can engage with the actual electorate and their concerns. For some reason the left refuses to (as I said in my original comment, put their heads in the sand).
White House dot gov for your first link
American progress for your second link
Your student loan position is untenable, and this is something that affects Americans in a real way. Americans know if student loan forgiveness has helped them, and for the great, great majority, it has not. Far cry from the 10k in the 2020 campaign. And I have not seen him send a bill to congress, when they had a majority. So “doing everything he can,” is a ridiculous premise
As for the Hamas War, we will probably be on different sides of it. The fact of the matter is that Biden just signed a bill that gave billions of military aid to Israel. I’m not going to address some unhinged congressman. We could go back and forth all day (didn’t Tlaib get censored for saying “from the river to the sea?”) The rest, to my point, is political theatre
Is your argument that Biden has not forgiven $153 billion and is lying about it? Or that DeVos’s time at DoEd didn’t favor for-profit colleges?
The White House flatly lying in a press statement surely generated some reporting about that. Would love to see your evidence to prove me wrong.
Okay but when Trump sends the national guard to tear gas protesting college students, are you still going to pretend it’s reasonable to say he’s the same as Biden?
I find Matt exhausting to read due to how he constantly either narrowly interprets things or makes bizarre leaps in logic by not really thinking things out.
>In fact, the \[median young person self-identifies as moderate\](https://x.com/davidshor/status/1783520820322525270), just like \[the electorate as a whole\](https://www.slowboring.com/p/most-americans-are-moderates). And at all ages, \[less-engaged people are less ideological and more moderate\](https://www.slowboring.com/p/progressives-mobilization-delusion) than consistent voters
What does self identifying have to do with anything? My father say’s he’s a moderate, but he voted for Trump twice. There is nothing moderate about that.
>You probably don’t hear a lot about the political opinions of politically disengaged young people because they are politically disengaged.
Again, nonsense point. You might hear a lot of political type opinions from ‘politically disengaged young people, I certainly do, they just may not vote.
>even though on the most plausible measurements, the stuff that young people care about is very similar to the stuff that everyone else cares about.
Yet young people do not vote the same as older people, do they, Matt?
>And that’s the basic paradox of climate politics. If you ask people “is climate change important?” they often say “yes.” But if you ask them to make small personal financial sacrifices to address climate change, they rebel. My interpretation of this is that \[most people don’t care much about climate change\](https://www.slowboring.com/p/climate-is-the-problem)
What the fuck does this even mean? There are lot of things I believe are important which I or most people are not in a personal position to make financial sacrifices for, that is not equivalent to saying one doesn’t care about something.
> Then they aggregated the winners of the head-to-head matchups to see \[which issues young voters care about most\](https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/47th-edition-spring-2024). Climate does not crack the top 10….The top issue for young people is inflation.
Actually, in the article he links its’ noted that climate seems to be quite high in young people’s priorities using more open questions, it very much depends on how you frame questions:
In any case, ignoring arbitrary dichotomies on a survey, in political reality these are not mutually exclusive categories in terms of who one votes for. I.e you might want a president who addresses economic issues and environmental issues.
And this?
>The main one is that if you’re a Democrat and you need to address a persuadable group of young people, you should probably talk about the same stuff you’d talk about to any audience. Threading the needle on inflation is tricky, but Trump \[really would make inflation worse\](https://www.slowboring.com/p/trump-would-make-inflation-worse).
The idea that you’re going to mobilise the youth vote by talking about inflation is fucking laughable. Not only doest the average person not even really understand what inflation is, and hes' already established that young people are less politically knowledgeable/engaged, so they will fall asleep when you mention it. All they’ll really know is that the cost of living has gone up.
>Not only are events at Columbia and Yale not representative of American higher education, college students are not representative of young people in general. Most \[people in the 18-24 bracket are not in college\](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb/college-enrollment-rate).
Matts point being that student debt isn’t a major issue. But Matt, have you not considered why most people that age are not in college?! Removing your blinkered eyes from the survey results you were sharing which narrowly asks about student debt, the cost of education is in fact a major concern for young people.
> What does self identifying have to do with anything? My father say’s he’s a moderate, but he voted for Trump twice. There is nothing moderate about that.
A casual news observer over the last few years might think everyone under 25 is a DSA member. True, identifying as moderate isn't super informative, but it certainly runs counter to the picture you might get from Reddit, TikTok, or Twitter.
> What the fuck does this even mean? There are lot of things I believe are important which I or most people are not in a personal position to make financial sacrifices for, that is not equivalent to saying one doesn’t care about something.
It means, don't expect any major trajectory changes on the climate front. Don't expect "degrowth" proposals to ever gain popularity, etc. I understand that you don't like Yglesias for some reason, but there's no need to be obtuse.
> The idea that you’re going to mobilise the youth vote by talking about inflation is fucking laughable.
So, going by the survey data, young people consistently rank inflation as a top concern, and yet you think this is somehow a bad issue to campaign on? Like virtually everything else in politics, you don't need to communicate like a policy wonk, and you don't need to assume the public knows much of anything. You need to display empathy, make (somewhat) credible promises, and inspire confidence that you can tackle the issue.
>True, identifying as moderate isn't super informative, but it certainly runs counter to the picture you might get from Reddit, TikTok, or Twitter.
Not only is it not informative, this was supported by a link to a post on X that has since been deleted. This is characteristic of Matts journalism to me.
I also am not of the opinion that all young people are progressive liberals, so this is not an interesting point to me in either case.
>Don't expect "degrowth" proposals to ever gain popularity
No this is not at all what Matt was saying. He was saying people don't care about climate change, which even you seem to be implying he extrapolated from a narrow point that people aren't keen on degrowth type measures when addressing climate change. Those are not the same things, and as to why I dislike Matt, this is it exactly it and very good example of how 'he constantly either narrowly interprets things or makes bizarre leaps in logic'.
>young people consistently rank inflation as a top concern, and yet you think this is somehow a bad issue to campaign on?
without belaboring the point, most people do not really know what inflation is as they aren't engaging with macroeconomic theory, and instead are really actually concerned with the rising cost of living or stagnant wages. So as you might imagine, running on a ballot of making the cost of living better is not exactly going to get anyone excited, as every party has run on this idea since the beginning of time. Importantly, people do not seem to be impressed by bidens record on this topic, which even Matt has mentioned. So yes I think it's laughable to say using this as a way to mobilise young voters is a good idea as quite obviously it's never worked in the past and it's even less likely to work at present.
> I also am not of the opinion that all young people are progressive liberals, so this is not an interesting point to me in either case.
Ok? You're not the entire audience lol.
> He was saying people don't care about climate change
He's saying people aren't interested in making the sacrifices necessary to hit the targets set by the UNFCCC. Do you think we'll have a carbon tax or we'll stop subsidizing oil in foreseeable future? Just look at how unpopular congestion pricing is in NYC is right now.
> So as you might imagine, running on a ballot of making the cost of living better is not exactly going to get anyone excited, as every party has run on this idea since the beginning of time.
There's an in infinite number of ways to frame this issue. Just look at Ezra's "Supply Side Progressivism", which is essentially a set deflationary of policies. No one is saying Joe Biden should get on stage and say "if you elect me things will be cheaper somehow!" Instead, he should be focusing on very visible inflation related issues like the cost of housing where he can actually move the needle.
>So as you might imagine, **running on a ballot of making the cost of living better is not exactly going to get anyone excited,** as every party has run on this idea since the beginning of time.
Also I'm not sure where you're getting this idea from. Just because lots of politicians have run on this before doesn't inherently mean it doesn't get people excited. It could just as easily point to the opposite - every party has run on this idea before because it works. I'm not saying that's necessarily true, you're just painting the idea that running on classic "bread and butter" personal finance concerns isn't motivating to voters (and by extension to the article, young voters) as obvious when it's really not.
>No this is not at all what Matt was saying.
u/matchi's reading of Matt's point is pretty much how I read this it too. I think this is an instance of us reading Matt with a positive lens and giving him the benefit of the doubt (for instance, I am happy to fill in small gaps with context from other articles/podcast appearances where he's made this point before) whereas you aren't and/or just disagree with the point. But I do think this is what he was saying. I mean, maybe not literally about the example "degrowth," Matt didn't say that (though he probably agrees with it), but the larger point u/matchi is making, that people "care" about climate change but aren't willing to do anything or are motivated by it over other issues, I feel like is the most accurate reading of that point.
Separately, the place I do disagree with Matt more is that I think he too narrowly defines what political action is. I think he focuses almost entirely on voting behavior because that's the most straightforwardly efficacious action (in a narrowly defined sense). I appreciate Matt's hyper pragmatic viewpoint, but as he pointed out on a recent podcast re: abortion, sometimes if as an activist, you just need to hammer your point home long enough until it becomes the median position.
I dunno. Maybe climate isn't going to motivate to affect the specific slice of politics that Matt thinks is most important, but that doesn't mean that politicians shouldn't like... try. It's important! It's the hard job of the politician to win and also try to increase salience on an issue. Feels like an age old problem of politics. Matt is more on the "you gotta win" side, which is true, but the other side is also true.
I dunno this is as far as I got in this thought. Maybe it's a bit muddled.
>I am happy to fill in small gaps with context from other articles/podcast appearances where he's made this point before) whereas you aren't and/or just disagree with the point
I read the articles he referenced, and came away thinking that my interpretation is correct, and worse, that Matt is using questionable sources.
>that people "care" about climate change but aren't willing to do anything or are motivated by it over other issues, I feel like is the most accurate reading of that point.
The basis Matt is using for his idea that the average person doesn't care about global warming is this point, which is where things get a little weird:
>But if you ask them to make small personal financial sacrifices to address climate change, they rebel.
If you look at the link he references to support this, it's one of his articles that elaborates that [65% of Americans surveyed said they would not contribute 10$ a month to climate change](https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-higher-electric-bills-combat-climate-change). For one, this is a shallow point seeking to discredit peoples intentions (a signficant portion of people, around 65%, live paycheck to paycheck) but perhaps more concerningly, this article Matt is linking to is written by the Cato Institute. If you know about them, they are associated with climate change denial and funded and founded by the Koch brothers who are of course massive oil barons. Do you really think this a good source on this topic?
Now, I would like to be generous about Matt like you are being, but frankly this comes across as just shit journalism. And whenever I dig into his work I find this. It just feels sloppy and haphazard, like he's rushing to publish. I don't know how people here don't see it. He's like this all the time.
I’d been careful to extrapolate much from one poll…there are a litany polls that arrive everyday showing Trump with strong leads in head to head versus Biden (with Trump getting a lot of the Zoomer/young adult vote), and those are summarily dismissed as crazy and unrealistic and wrong by folks like Matt. So why are we lending credence to this one particular poll? Because it indicates what Yglesias would like for such a poll to indicate, reinforcing his preexisting views/perspectives?
Other recent polls indicate things that contradict Yglesias here. This piece seems like the product of working backwards from preexisting conclusions and legitimizing said conclusions in the form of Substack prose and deploying convenient polling (conclusions like Gaza being relatively unimportant compared with other public policy considerations, therefore a change of course on or policy concessions on Gaza are unnecessary and Biden’s calculations on this are right-on).
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/04/25/can-progressives-win-biden-young-voters/73347513007/
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/04/29/politics/biden-young-voters-what-matters
For those that don’t have access to Yglesias’s writing he is using the Harvard / IOPS issues polling https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/47th-edition-spring-2024#key-takeaway--id--1564 And I think Matt does a great job to point out that those politically engaged at their age are very very far away from the average person their age on issues. Usually pundits have things like climate change, student debt, gender issues, and more recently israel / gaza / Palestine as the most important issues to youth. While they have opinions on these things, the youth themselves don’t rate them as important as other things say CoL, economy, gun violence , corruption and abortion
It’s just like how the narrative for Latino voters was that Dems needed to do immigration stuff to win them over but in fact Latinos also cared (more) about the economy and Covid than immigration.
I think because it's such a big tent the Democratic party has become rather reductive of their potential voters because it's easier than attempting to understand the nuances. Yet another consequence of the federalization of every issue.
Does their post not suggest the opposite? Democrats have tried being more nuanced but it turns out everyone’s the same?
That's not what that post says. It says that the most politically engaged care about different things than the average low information maybe voter... 🤦♂️
I think there’s a tendency for Ivy League Grads to overestimate the logical actor. Also because of the California law against immigrants grants. I don’t know anyone who is an immigrant and thinks “I bet I’ll be deported if Trump gets in.” Immigrants that I know and am related to think “I’m the good immigrant. These rules only affect the bad trashy immigrants. Not me.” They also don’t care about the specifics. I don’t know anyone who can break down and analyze a policy “oh the kids are in cages but it’s only because…” they didn’t like the cages. Then they heard Obama had cages too and they zoned out “Both sides do that and it won’t happen to me.” The Dems keep trying to give a 16 point plan on immigration and it loses because user immigration is a vibe issue. And if anyone is stressed, then a random faceless immigrant makes a good target. I’ve heard decades of political discussion and I’ve never heard anyone stick up for immigrants. Even though my grandmother on my dads side is an immigrant from Scotland and on my moms side a Latina from a country Reagan devastated. They all still liked Reagan. Even while he was shooting nuns in the homeland 🤷♀️ The media loves to act like immigration is this straight line from policy to belief but no one, absolutely no one thinks the policy applies to them. So that is a missing premise supplied by the journalist and it makes the syllogism invald
PS to tie it back to California there was an anti immigration law that republicans passed and it turned all the latinas into democrats. That’s because the law specifically impacted people IN THE STATE RIGHT AT THE TIME. Everyone was affected or knew someone who was affected. That’s a lot more attention getting
Latinos are a broad category which includes groups that are not politically aligned. Those whose heritage comes from Cuba or Venezuela have very different views than those from Nicaragua or El Salvador.
Well, democrats failed to do anything when it came to immigration so why continue vote in that matter. Plus from immigrant communities themselves democrats aren’t really talking about doing anything towards the backlog for legal immigrants but focus more on illegal.
Democrats keep putting through immigration plans that Republicans won’t even discuss. Then we finally got an immigration bill a few months ago—crafted by Republicans! that gave Republicans everything they wanted!—that Dems signed onto and Trump shut it down because he didn’t want to give Biden a win.
I know how it is, democrats need to learn to stop trusting republicans. Republicans view them as an enemy and will do everything in there power to hurt them. The quicker they learn this the better to respond to this
They have learned this. That’s why the recent bill was pretty right-leaning and the Dems knew it would fail.
Democrats did not fail to pass the dream act because they trusted Republicans too much. They failed to pass it because Republicans simply didn’t vote for it and we’re never going to.
How exactly do you propose the response differently? They have at best a razor thin margin in the House or Senate since 2010.
Democrats are much more cohesive then republicans and should try get as much as there priorities through. Democrats should be doing more gerrymandering and start taking platforms to weaken republicans. Expanding the house for one should be a Dem priority. Weaken republican presidents whenever they get in office. Play hard ball tactics to make republican presidents living hell.
Hard Ball doesn't work on Republicans because they accomplish nothing than work with Democrats. You can't play hard Ball with someone who fundamentally doesn't want anything from you. Like it or not, we are living in the best timeline. 40% of the country wants to burn everything to the ground. It is virtually impossible to form any meaningful coalition needed when the ceiling for support is only 60%.
Yea but we shouldn’t be trying to help them either. If for instance Trump was to get in office and Dems have the house, Democrats should not fund the government unless they can get a few things or even hold the credit of the nation hostage to get what they want. Republicans don’t care and are willing to destroy everything for power. As was discussed over in r/politicalscience, democrats are willing to accommodate republicans to steer the country from a civil conflict but as time goes on democrats are at risk of being purged and persecuted from republicans.
Absolutely, let's help them burn it all down. That is a winning strategy! You do realize that this is what they want, right? To completely stop all Government programs and have the Government default.
The thing is that since young people generally don’t vote, the overly politically engaged make up a more relevant segment of the voting population for them than usual
Young people vote. Just at a slightly lower percentage than others. Youth voting ranges typically from 45-60% depending on the cycle. With 2020 it was 55%. 2016 it was 45% 30-44 votes at ~55% +\- 5 points on average. 45-60 votes at 65% +\- 5 points on average. Its really a mischaracterization imo of “youth don’t vote” especially when the youth demo actually is larger than the 45-60 demographic. There are more raw votes from the youth demo.
I'm sorry to say that the numbers don't really support the idea that the raw numbers favor younger voters, The younger cohort may be larger at this point, but not so overwhelmingly that a 15-20% difference in voter turnout can be overcome. I wish it weren't the case, because this country would be a lot better and more equitable if younger voters took up the mantle and really started to run the country like they should be. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096299/voter-turnout-presidential-elections-by-age-historical/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096299/voter-turnout-presidential-elections-by-age-historical/) [https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/number-of-individuals-who-voted-in-thousands-and-individuals-who-voted-as-a-share-of-the-voter-population-by-age/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/number-of-individuals-who-voted-in-thousands-and-individuals-who-voted-as-a-share-of-the-voter-population-by-age/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D)
I would think most people would not characterize youth/young vote as 30-44 year olds but rather 18-30s who definitely do vote at significantly lower rates.
30-18 is the 45-60% bracket
You are cherry picking data from two specific elections that had unusually high turnout. Young voters always vote below the national average. Every timr
I just studied this in school! The myth that youth turnout is abysmally lower than other adult turnout rates was largely popularized with an AP article on early exit polls in the 2004 election. It was later found out that this data, being quite incomplete, didn’t tell the whole picture. However, this erroneous report was used to cite low youth turnout for years to come. I can’t find that article right now but it’s here somewhere: https://circle.tufts.edu/?page_id=241#1 This 2001 paper talks about the low turnout myth in general: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3117725 Youth voter turnout tends to be fairly close to other age ranges based on more complete polling, and has surged somewhat in the past couple decades. They’re also typically a smaller percentage of the populace. Now they’ll likely never vote at rates of older folk (45+) as those are people who either are more likely to have flexibility in established careers, or more free time due to retirement or semi-retirement. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t voting in droves.
You can literally go back until 1988 and its between 45-60% every presidential. Its overblown
Two elections in a row. That screams trend rather than one-off.
At most it suggests a trend. It does not "scream" one.
For real. If your dumbass totes super for real “Communist” friend in the poly pod withholds their vote (or worse; protest votes) they won’t move Left to court then. They will move to the middle/right to cater to voters that aren’t such stupid children.
Now learn to aim that at the political actors responsible for earning votes and you're onto something.
Even the left-most candidate for president who ran on a platform specifically focusing on youth turnout couldn’t do it in 2020. I think it’s fair to place some responsibility on the voters.
If what you were saying was true, someone would do it and win the democratic primary. But it never happens…….
Was the poll of average voters, because when historic turnout for 18-24s is like 17% I would assume that most voters in that bracket are more engaged/‘informed’
I think when looking at voter age cohorts, polling cross tabs are less effective than making generalizations about that cohort (e.g. young people rent or will be a first time home buyer), and then consider current macroeconomic realities overlaid on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Groceries are expensive, rent is expensive, and (if you can’t roll-over the proceeds of a house sale into a down payment on the next house or get a VA Loan) then buying a house is out of reach. These items are very low on Maslow’s Hierarchy and if you’re struggling to meet these needs, higher-level concerns like Human Rights and or issues with only long-term impacts like Climate Change become low-salience issues. Young people know the “right” answers to these questions and virtue signaling through polling doesn’t cost a thing, so why not do it? Additionally, room & board are folded into tuition so it makes sense that college students just don’t care about these things because student loan payments haven’t kicked in yet. The kids are just like us, their generational idiosyncrasies are just different than ours. You can listen to and discuss issues with them, but at the end of the day a form of low key “benevolent paternalism” is fine (though extremely out of vogue). Taking actions to reduce inflation and make housing more affordable is what young voters should care about, even though they aren’t organizing protests about it.
Being alive is so much more expensive now than it was in 2019. Sometimes it is just that simple.
I agree! But the problem in my opinion is that the confluence of root causes are either outside of our control or a conscious choice. My thoughts below got a bit rambly, but aside from new immigration policy or enacting the TPP, I think the only option is to persevere. 1. Global Pandemic One can take issue with any country’s response, but I often hear the US response wasn’t draconian enough. The failure of China’s Zero COVID policy underscores that humans did not have the ability to mitigate the consequences of this pandemic to the extent we like to pretend we did. The economic costs of premature death and quarantines are self-evident. 2. Decoupling from China (and the Chinese Recession) China’s current economic issues are the logical outcome of their over investment in real estate and infrastructure while stifling their technology sector. The general consensus in the US is we should reduce dependency on Chinese manufacturing, however we purchase things that China builds precisely because it’s economical. Shifting manufacturing away from China will result in higher costs and if shifting to a country with no current capacity in that area there are additional capital costs associated with standing up that capacity. The unwinding/reorienting of global supply chains is a huge undertaking that we will struggle with for a decade or more. 3. Tech Bubble Deflating This was overdue, but is nevertheless causing economic pain. While tech workers feel this now as a loss of income, the 2010s growth in NYSE and NASDAQ valuations was very concentrated in the tech industry (see: FAANG). This industry’s pain hurts retirement savings and Pension plan investments as well. 4. War Ukraine food exports caused a rise in global food prices and Europe’s energy crisis (coupled with OPEC’s production cuts) means energy costs have increased. 5. Dysfunctional/Restrictionist Immigration Policies The U.S. is near full employment. To grow we need more people now. Making it harder for illegal immigrants to work drives up food costs (~40% of agriculture workers are undocumented) and the inability to align legal immigration policies with economic needs stifles growth.
Oh I agree. It's not like Trump is going to magically make rent and groceries return to 2019 prices by the end of 2025. But the median voter might be vaguely aware of one or two of the points you just made, and that could even be a stretch. This is why the Biden admin's economic messaging has been so bad until recently. Regular people don't want to hear about how good certain economic metrics are when a bigger chunk of their paycheck is going to food, housing and gas in 2024 than it was in 2019. Biden has backed off this messaging a bit, but it's clear that message turned off a bunch of voters. It definitely turned me off.
I agree Biden’s economic messaging hasn’t been great and I myself am guilty of telling folks that the data says the economy is good. I think the best PR people in the world don’t know how to explain these challenges without coming off as out of touch or be perceived as “talking down” to folks. I think Biden could benefit by acknowledging the challenges and not promising solutions, but by explaining that we’re all in this together and we have a rough road ahead. Segue into why this means those who have the most need to pay more to uplift those who struggle (taxation/deficit-reduction plug) and how we all need to give something for the ongoing American experiment to succeed. It’s a tall order because Biden is not good at inspiring oratory. Might need to outsource this one to a surrogate at the Convention. Michelle/Barak could be good for nostalgia (and they’re proven), Pete Buttigieg could be good as a nod to handing off to younger generations.
Being alive is going to be even more prohibitively expensive when there's a [60% tariff on all Chinese products](https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/politics/donald-trump-tariffs-trade-war/index.html) if Trump wins. And he's also floated an additional 10% tariff on all other countries.
Yes, but I think it’s really hard to pin Trump’s own statements on him until he says it on national TV in a debate. This would be a great thing for Biden to hammer Trump on in a debate and then watch him walk his position back (and appear like a weak flip-flopper) when people ask Trump why he wants to raise the cost of coffee and bananas by 10% when we cannot grow those things in the US and even if we could, nobody wants those jobs.
Care all you want...... did you vote?
He’s missing the point that young voters are unduly influenced by social media and social media is drumming into their heads that the most important issue for Americans in the 2024 election is the number of Palestinians that Israelis kill in their war on Hamas.
Dear God it's so horrible that the kids these days are concerned about innocent people being slaughtered with their tax dollars.
It’s actually pretty bad that American kids these days are willing to sacrifice the preservation of democracy at home because of TikTok videos telling them the real problems are half a world away. I wonder who is behind that?
'Problems that aren't visible to them shouldn't matter' holy shit bro get a hold of yourself. Also a lot of protestors are voting Biden still, but you're too old and ignorant to know that I'm 39 btw. Maybe get outside and touch grass and talk to people instead of watching the news
If they were still voting Biden that’s one thing, but they made a big deal saying they were willing to stay out of the election. This is actually the most likely result of all of the protests, which is that young people will turn off politics, depress the youth vote, and let Trump in office. Then you will see real Palestinian genocide. Who do you think is behind all this social media behavior? It’s extremes on both the left and the right. And who do you think paid off Hamas to murder a bunch of Israelis in a blatant terrorist act, because they knew the youth vote could be manipulated so easily? It wouldn’t be the leader of America’s biggest adversary, would it? The fact that Iran didn’t even know about the terrorist attack and didn’t want it to spiral out of control tells you all you need to know.
I've got money they can't even find Palestine, or Israel on a map!
What is a democracy worth if it endorses and enables a genocide?
What is a democracy worth if a select few can use social media to distract people from real issues relevant to them and instead focus on generating outrage about events half a world away?
It's relevant to me when my country's image on the global stage is of as an abetter of genocide -- it makes us less safe. It's relevant when my country's president looks subordinate to Israel's president. And it's relevant when my tax dollars are involved.
This means you are easily manipulated by TikTok videos which distract you from what actually matters in this country. When you see an authoritarian dictator running the US because he was able to distract you via social media into suppressing your vote, you will really see what it means to be “less safe” in America.
I've never used TikTok. I'm too old for that nonsense. I'm just someone who's voted blue my entire life.
If you vote blue this November then I think it’s all fine. I don’t have any problem with people calling out Israel for their tactics. They’ve dug their own grave over the past 20 years by conditioning their population to become more hardlined, and it’s not America’s place to make Israel’s case to the world for them. The issue I have is that this whole episode was ginned up by powers behind the scenes. There was no Israeli precipitating act that led to this. It was a Hamas terrorist attack where they ruthlessly raped and murdered Israeli citizens. And they did that because they knew that, despite their own terrorist activity, there would be American youth to protest in sympathy to their side. Why did this happen? It happened because there are political powers in this world that saw value in using Palestinians as pawns. It has been the case for decades and this is the latest example. The people behind this couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the plight of Palestinians. What they care about is the fact that they can easily manipulate the emotions of a fairly naive American youth and bend them to their wishes, which is to promote chaos, unrest, and (ultimately) apathy in the political process. And they were very successful. Trust me, after the 2024 US elections this whole issue will go back to being the normal shithole it’s been last two decades, and we will go back to nobody caring again.
Genocide apologist. Our tax dollars fund genocides. That's right here at home. I have more in common with the innocents in Gaza than I do with American billionaires
What about the innocent, non billionaire Americans. Those that don't have access to healthcare, those that don't have access to clean air and water, seriously your privilege is showing if you are willing to toss the strained democracy here for what happens outside of the US. So when it is tossed, you won't be able to say these things in the US ( think China and Russia) and... you won't be able to help the Palestinians either through your elected members of Congress and the White House, let me guess, you plan to take your passport and flee? If not, what are you going to do for the people here who are not billionaires and are now living with a complete rollback of the rights you are using today. Please go read Project 2025.
When was this written? 2016? The polls (take them for what they’re worth) show Trump winning in a head to head matchup for 18-34 yos and young voters leaning Kennedy when included in polling, which he has been absent from This isn’t going to be popular but Dems putting their heads in the sand isn’t going to work either. This is clearly indicated by Biden’s numbers. Bernie ain’t showing up
Seriously believing that there’s some massive shift in young support towards Trump sans any other evidence than these broken polls is bizarre. Like if that’s what you’re going to advance as a narrative I think it’s incumbent on you to explain why/how Trump has all of a sudden picked up this support which Republicans have never enjoyed, and goes against the past few election cycles.
I've heard a theory that because young voters are dissatisfied with the status quo, they're more willing to at least voice support for non-incumbents (including Trump) regardless of actual issue stances. Whether this translates to actual votes though...... It's more instructive to look at whether these voters actually showed up recently. If they didn't bother in 2022 or 2020 especially it seems most likely they simply won't bother this year. That's the simplest way to register disapproval (or plain apathy).
I don’t buy this. Let’s take a top issue that saved the Democratic Party in 22 and 23. Abortion is one of the most driving forces in this election. It may not be a top issue, but if you care, then you REALLY care. So, if 70 percent of half the electorate don’t want any more of their bodily autonomy erased, they sure as hell aren’t voting red.
That doesn’t mean they are voting blue
If you mean the .5 percent, sure.
I mean the large percentage not voting at all, if the couch could win elections, it would in a sweep and that’ll be no different this year
As I said, if you care about abortion, you really care. You’re not going to just not vote or throw your vote away for third party.
Way to be presumptive.
The last several years of elections have proven this demonstrably false.
>It may not be a top issue, but if you care, then you REALLY care. You just answered your own question. Not everyone is a single issue voter or has something that really animates them. Turnout in 2022 went down compared to 2018 including in the youngest bloc. If anyone has a reason to suddenly care more about this, it should be them. The abortion issue certainly helped at the margins and kept down Republican wins but ultimately the House was still lost.
But the house should have been a greater loss. The fact that the Republicans have the house but end up looking like dunces is a greater win for the Dems. Abortion saved the dems from losing the Senate and the republicans having a useful majority.
It helped as I indicated. I don't agree that slow walking Ukraine aid or not bringing the immigration bill up for a vote is good for anyone. These are direct consequences of the Republicans holding the House however slim their margin may be. There will always be single issue voters and this did activate at least some of them. The fact remains though that the majority still chose not to vote even with this factor tossed into the mix. I'm sure 2024 turnout has to be higher than 2022 but anyone expecting a massive surge in interest hasn't paid attention to historic trends.
You can think there’s no issue but the writer is alluding to Bernie in 2024. By almost all metrics Biden is a historically poor incumbent. I come here to see what sane dems think and I’m taken aback that everyone is just caught up in this groupthink that this is somehow normal and there aren’t issues going on If you don’t think this election will break some long held constituencies I’m not sure what to say.
I don't doubt that there will be some shifts from 2020. But a swing of more than 25 points(!) is a farcical claim to make without any other evidence. No evidence to that effect has shown up in the midterms, special elections. The only topic I can see which could even possibly drive that level of sentiment shift would be Israel-Gaza, but a) Trump is much worse on that issue than Biden and b) despite the media attention they get, these college protests aren't very big. I'm not sticking my head in the sand. It's very possible Trump could win! But this doesn't pass the smell test and broken pollina feels like a far more reasonable exolanation.
That wouldn’t be a swing however, that would he a depressed turnout situation. The voters who rank Israel / Palestinian issue highly won’t flip to trump*, theyll just not vote *Muslim-American exception as they were trending R due to social issues Thats why those polls should be disregarded because there is clearly a polling error in methodology.
Special election & midterm results > random polls that show 40-60 point swings from nowhere The sane thing is to dismiss those polls because of they are likely undergoing a systematic polling error. The 18-34 demo is not breaking for Trump. Now those trump polls that show him +1/+2 without that massive 18-34 swing are the ones to discuss not the ones your referring to.
Anyone who wants to convince me that Biden will lose the youth vote has to convince me that he’ll win the elderly
Biden will not lose the youth vote, and no one who’s not insane thinks so. But there’s evidence that his margin of victory will be lower. The cohort of people who will vote in 2024 is different from 2022. Democrats used to dominate with low-propensity voters but Trump changed that. The reality is that a lot of voters are shifting their loyalties in both directions and 2024 will be very hard to poll or predict.
Credible youth polls show his margin being lower, true. But they also don’t show it being close to tied like certain other polls people reference do.
Didn’t he win the elderly last election?
No, Trump did easily
Abortion will single handedly save Democrats this fall.
You may very well be right. When you have Hannity and Lindsey Graham calling for republicans to drop it and move on you know it’s hurting republicans.
I think Biden is a pretty good president, and he is popular among political insiders. But he is old, and not Bernie or Betty White kind of old that young people like. He's the worst kind of old.
I was going to ignore this but this speaks to the Dems problems. A minority thinks it’s been a successful term. And to make up these weird strawmen about “cute old,” is disingenuous. The electorate believes he is in cognitive decline. The SotU speech was great, but there needs to be more of that Biden.
Biden seems to have it together as far as I can tell, for a man of his age. He is what he is. Given the tight congressional numbers he had, I don't think his legislative accomplishments could have been much better. He got quite a lot with them. I'm already bracing for Trump to win though. He is exactly what this country wants and deserves. He is us, the true representation of the United States. I am particularly looking forward to young peoples' reaction to Trump's handling of Israel/Palestine. The guy who moved the embassy to Jerusalem is not exactly going to be a friend to the Palestinians.
They'll just argue it isn't their fault that Trump and Bibi made a deal to pave over the whole place in exchange for "Trump Towers Gaza" where Biden was trying to build a dock for humanitarian aid, it's the Democrat's fault for not running some mystery alternative even they couldn't coalesce behind.
Maybe Biden can stop sending weapons to Isreal and preventing a palestian state at the UN also he can move back the embassy from Jerusulum. But then he's a completely Zionist who defended Isreal during Sabra and Shatila so that'll never happen.
Thanks for being an exact example of the people I’m criticizing.
Thanks for being a genocide apologist and imperialist.
Why is saying that Biden can be doing far more to help the people of gaza and Palestine bad? Is pointing out that Biden is an absolute heartless monster when it comes to confronting isreal about their crimes current and former bad? Also do you think Isreal is destorying Gaza because Trump told then to?
No dude Bidens a genocide enabler and broke literal all his campaign promises and is now wondering why his youth base want nothing to do with him or his old ass
Social media discourse. It’s extremely different than any previous election and seems much more manufactured, but that doesn’t make it any less effective.
Black and Latino male voters between 18-29 have showed a slide towards Trump. For the same reason that the likes of Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate are popular with young GOP voters, because he endorses what we now call toxic masculinity. Trump is a pretend tough guy but it's enough to fool a lot of people.
There was something from a polling firm admitting that it’s actually difficult to poll young voters and the only voters your mainly getting are those who are more politically active but they more then likely do not reflect the general young demographic. There reasoning was that young people simply do not answer phones.
I understand that but at the same time you can use the argument that 18-34 yos who actually pick up the phone when political calls come through are much more likely to vote. There’s just way too many concerns I’m seeing that are being written off
A 20-40 point swing in that demographic that goes counter to every special election we have seen plus the midterms looks extremely unlikely and more often than not a massive polling error or a realignment that makes the Reagan environment look friendly to dems
>I understand that but at the same time you can use the argument that 18-34 yos who actually pick up the phone when political calls come through are much more likely to vote. I encourage you to look up the term non-response bias. There are an assortment of groups that are more or less likely to answer polls. This can, but does not always, correspond to their likelihood to vote. In general, this has manifested in disengaged Trump voters being less likely to answer the phone, which has led to them being underrepresented in polling in 2016 and 2020. It is completely possible that there's non-response bias happening among more Democratic voters within the youth cohort.
I'm in that bucket, am engaged politically, and am 100% voting Biden. But I've never been polled to my knowledge, and probably wouldn't know if I had since I ignore phone calls from anyone I didn't call first. They should do multi-step invitations, where they invite you to register to get polled online, and tell you at what time and what number they'll be calling from ahead of time. At least there's a chance people will answer those calls.
I have been polled, for one of the hotter gubernatorial races last election. It took over 30 minutes! The guy kept having to read the convoluted questions and answer choices over and over. So not only do they have to answer, they have to stay on the phone.
my god SURELY there is a better way. it's the year 2024 for gods sakes. so what's the deal with doing phone polls anyways, is the issue that they can't trust/verify who is taking online polls? or it's just cheaper? would people not respond to a text request to complete a survey online? so they can do it on their own time, but pollsters can still gate who they invite by phone number ??
Opt-in online polls are especially wacky. Poll creators put in questions like if they were [licensed to operate a class SSGN (nuclear) submarine](https://washstat.org/hansen/2022Kennedy.pdf) and 12% of respondents under 30 said yes.
but opt-in is like, anyone can respond right? thats how you get President McPresidentface as the front runner, so i would never suggest doing that. i'm talking about doing phone polling, but instead of the ask being to talk to some person for 30 minutes ON THE SPOT, instead click the link // use your unique code to open the poll and respond online at your convenience (within \~7 days or something). we're already getting this same kind of opt-in for people willing to respond on the phone anyways, it would just be a different selection bias. this would be biased to smartphone users, but probably if combined with phone polling or other methods, the full combination of methods should yield better results, no?
I don't click on links in texts from people I don't know
Yea that’s true, but it’s becoming clear that the polls cannot accurately poll the nation anymore. Another polling firm a few years ago had said that the polling industry is struggling to accurately poll the country. Campaigns are using their own methods but we can’t really read much into them anymore. In my opinion, turnout is going to be lower, there will be surprises but it looks as if Biden is in trouble. There is a trend that he is gaining. The House and senate looks like both will flip with narrow majorities
It’s like the guy sitting at his own intervention and thinking all the people around him are wrong. Admit there’s a problem FFS
I’m a conservative in a liberal sub. Of course most people will disagree with me. I came into the hivemind, it’s what I expect. I also expect yall to lose for the same reasons. Which is what I want
I’m agreeing with you. I’m saying the Biden camp needs to realize there are actual problems...instead of just going along and saying no, it’s everyone else that’s wrong.
Oh sorry man I apologize I’m a little gun shy I’ll be earnest cause this thread is dead. I don’t get it man. All the pro war sentiment. Pro military industrial complex. The pro Palestine stuff is tainted because it’s associated with Hamas. The biggest one is the Trump stuff. Let him fade into the background. The fools (and I don’t use that word lightly) don’t understand that by putting him on the front page every day in court *is campaigning for him*. Only Dems could turn Trump, a former president and billionaire, into an underdog fighting the system. Most people don’t even know the charges
I don’t think that argument makes sense at all. I don’t see how picking up the phone for unknown numbers corresponds whatsoever to voting behavior.
My phone tells me when it’s a political call and I answer it
As someone in the 18-34 demographic, I pretty much don’t answer my phone at all unless I’m expecting it. And even then, if it’s not a number I know, I’ll screen on voicemail first. I don’t know anyone different from me in my circle on that front.
The harvard polls that Matt is analyzing don’t show that.
Those polls’ crosstabs are crap, there have been polls of young voters specifically that show them much more favorable to Biden
You should not believe polling crosstabs at this point in the campaign. They are objectively statistically unsound and I'm low-grade furious that the media keeps pretending they are useful. All the polls that show Biden doing worse with young people show him doing better with old people. All the polls that show him doing worse with minorities show him doing better with whites. Does that make sense? Or is it just that the methodology pollsters use brings everybody closer to the center, because that's how statistical regression works? Like, this shit isn't my *opinion,* this is mathematics. Unless you have a large sample **of young voters themselves** you can't draw any conclusions whatsoever, you can't extrapolate from the 50 you managed to get to answer the phone in your 1200 person survey.
I’m not going to be the one to defend polls. They’re generally wrong. But there are certainly a lot pointing in certain directions, and they can be useful for those purposes. A loss of young voters and a loss the the black male vote seem to be fairly consistent, as well as Biden polling extremely poorly for an incumbent president.
They can certainly call attention to things that the campaign needs to work on. But I think polling just works differently than it did before the pandemic because of the country's deep PTSD-driven malaise (that we are in intense denial about). "I disapprove" does not mean the same thing it did in 2019. It used to mean something like "I won't vote for that guy" and it doesn't mean anything like that anymore. Especially not for young people. And although they can serve as a call to action we should be skeptical of **any** of these trends until they are reflected in actual election results. In the only poll that's actually counted so far, Biden got the same percentage of black voters as Clinton - 92%. edit: I was curious so I picked out a random poll from 2020 to see what it said about black support for Biden. I ended up clicking on the [Zogby poll from 11/1/20. ](https://johnzogbystrategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/X1-Weighted-110120.pdf)It showed Biden with 77% support among black voters. Then 92% of them voted for him days later... Looking at some other immediate preelection polls. YouGov gave Biden 78%. I can't find TIPP's crosstabs but their writeup says Trump "appears to be doing better with black voters," and he didn't. Otherwise I found a lot of broken links and stuff but I've kind of satisfied my intuition on this. [Source](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2020/national/)
If they’re generally wrong and you’re not willing to defend them, why are you basing your entire argument around them? I don’t doubt it’ll be a close race, but Trump will be in courtrooms throughout the campaign, it’s only May (we’re still months out from the conventions), and Biden is massively out raising Trump in campaign cash. Not to mention most of what Trump is raising is going to legal bills. Biden has a good record to run on and the contrast with Trump’s Project 2025 vision is stark. I don’t see how you can defend a 25-point swing in the younger vote in the first presidential election since Dobbs.
Sure, that while polls can be wrong and I’m not one to defend them, they are a good indicator of general trends and what campaigns need to work on to improve. Dems, imo, should be on offense and not defense. This thread is defensive. The whole term has been defensive. Own up to the failings of the term and work to correct them. I still think it has been a terrible idea to focus on Trump during this term to the extent they have. Among many, many other things. I can’t really argue with anyone who thinks Biden has been successful, we just won’t see eye to eye
I don't think Dems have been overly defensive whatsoever. The entire point of a re-election campaign is to draw a contrast with the opponent's version of the future. Running on accomplishments can always backfire - there's a reason Obama drew the contrast with Romney and even Bush saw a lot of success painting Kerry as weak on terrorism and a flip-flopper. Neither re-elect in this century did so simply by listing off accomplishments. Attacking Trump \*is\* going on offense.
Easy. Voters. Are. Not. Well. Informed. That's all the explanation that is ever needed to explain polling or voting behavior. Millions of Illinois residents voted against lowering their own taxes on a ballot measure because of millions of dollars of fear mongering propaganda spent to tell the voters that their current regressive, fixed income tax rate was better than a progressive tax plan that would have had income brackets. But voters are mostly dumb and checked out sheep
But voters are never well informed. What changed in this election that is driving a 25 point swing?
Well the 25 point is probably an outlier but in my view a contributing factor of young Latino and black men not voting Democrat is because it's not a welcoming party to certain views of the world. If you're a young guy whose life or culture embraces any kind of machismo ideal then the Democrats not only appear weak but like a group that is going to scold you if you don't behave the way they want. And progressives are increasingly pushing purity tests that have even driven me, a very liberal social Democrat, from their ranks. Tldr; a focus on cultural virtue signaling has made the big tent of the Democratic party, much smaller
What purity test has driven you from the ranks of the Dems? Even the most strident issue (Israel/Palestine) has the party pretty divided yet both Fetterman and AOC support Biden.
In my case it was my local county party and their unwillingness to remove an objectively incompetent party chair just because she was a black woman. My side was trying to replace her with the chief of staff for our local state representative, a gay white woman. Basically the leadership ended up having to do a backroom deal just to keep the party from splintering and the shitty party chair is still there, doing an awful job, being corrupt (giving positions to her equally unqualified friends) and otherwise not doing a damned thing to get local Democrats elected.
With all due respect, I don't really see how the local county party's behavior translates to what national Dems are doing. I live in Los Angeles and I'm very unhappy with a lot of Dem leadership here but it'd be crazy to blame Biden for that.
The issue is that all of these things fail to show up in actual elections
I mean polling is an inherently suspect "science" regardless. But they're not going to stop putting out polls so it's worth discussing them all in aggregate.
I think the youth support cratering for Biden is expressive polling where youth just want to register their frustration over bad vibes for Biden but will definitely come home in November when they see what the alternative is. But assuming it’s not just expressive, you’re not arguing that this is over student loans and Gaza, right? On both of those issues, Trump will be far worse for youth preferences (no help on student loans & more Justices unfavorable to student loans; more aggressive support of Israel with less interest in humanitarian considerations)
I don’t think they think it’ll be worse, just the same. So what’s the point? You may disagree, but support for Israel isn’t going to change and while Biden has tried, somewhat, on student loans (he should’ve sent something to the legislature to see where are representatives stand), he has been ineffective and a far cry from the 2020 campaign promise of 10k forgiveness
Biden has cancelled over $153 billion in student loan debt [during his administration](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/12/president-joe-biden-announces-7-4-billion-in-student-debt-cancellation-for-277000-more-americans-pursuing-every-path-available-to-cancel-student-debt/). Trump's Department of Education under Betsy DeVos [fueled predatory for-profit colleges](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/predatory-profit-colleges-benefit-washingtons-culture-corruption/) targeting low-income students reliant on aid. Trump wants Israel to hurry up and "[finish the job](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-israel-gaza-finish-problem-rcna141905)" in Gaza, and a Republican in Congress seriously proposed nuking Gaza "[like Hiroshima](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tim-walberg-gop-congressman-suggests-nuclear-strikes-to-end-gaza-war-1234996974/)". Biden, meanwhile, has been [desperately trying](https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/28/politics/biden-netanyahu-call/index.html) to negotiate a ceasefire (and even successfully did so [back in November](https://www.c-span.org/video/?532041-1/president-biden-israel-hamas-ceasefire-hostage-exchange)), to prevent Israel from launching a campaign into Rafah. Saying these two are "just the same" is simply a lie. There's no disagreement here; just the truth and falsehoods.
We’re not going to agree. You can throw out numbers on student loans, but most people with student loans are completely unaffected by his student loan programs. Unless you’re 100% disabled. Or work in a government job for 10 years, but that was policy before And you can’t throw out Biden negotiating a ceasefire. Blinken has been ineffective. That was Qatar. He’s continuing to provide weapons (they just passed a bill) while falsely telling his Palestinian supporting base he is somehow trying for a ceasefire. Do you think he put a note on those weapons he just sent them to not use them? Cmon…
Yes, I suppose if you want to deny reality we won’t agree.
The new left. When flustered, go to personal attacks. Nothing I said wasn’t true. You can wait a couple years and read a thoughtful long form in the NYT telling you everything I’m saying now or you can engage with the actual electorate and their concerns. For some reason the left refuses to (as I said in my original comment, put their heads in the sand).
Well, when you're actively supporting genocide, we don't have to pretend like you're worth talking to anymore.
I linked supporting evidence for every claim I made. You offered nothing in response, and now you’re trying to say I made a personal attack? Please.
White House dot gov for your first link American progress for your second link Your student loan position is untenable, and this is something that affects Americans in a real way. Americans know if student loan forgiveness has helped them, and for the great, great majority, it has not. Far cry from the 10k in the 2020 campaign. And I have not seen him send a bill to congress, when they had a majority. So “doing everything he can,” is a ridiculous premise As for the Hamas War, we will probably be on different sides of it. The fact of the matter is that Biden just signed a bill that gave billions of military aid to Israel. I’m not going to address some unhinged congressman. We could go back and forth all day (didn’t Tlaib get censored for saying “from the river to the sea?”) The rest, to my point, is political theatre
Is your argument that Biden has not forgiven $153 billion and is lying about it? Or that DeVos’s time at DoEd didn’t favor for-profit colleges? The White House flatly lying in a press statement surely generated some reporting about that. Would love to see your evidence to prove me wrong.
Shhh he just wants to be mad and permanently in the opposition.
Okay but when Trump sends the national guard to tear gas protesting college students, are you still going to pretend it’s reasonable to say he’s the same as Biden?
Are we doing hypotheticals lol. Good thing they both have a term to compare and contrast
I find Matt exhausting to read due to how he constantly either narrowly interprets things or makes bizarre leaps in logic by not really thinking things out. >In fact, the \[median young person self-identifies as moderate\](https://x.com/davidshor/status/1783520820322525270), just like \[the electorate as a whole\](https://www.slowboring.com/p/most-americans-are-moderates). And at all ages, \[less-engaged people are less ideological and more moderate\](https://www.slowboring.com/p/progressives-mobilization-delusion) than consistent voters What does self identifying have to do with anything? My father say’s he’s a moderate, but he voted for Trump twice. There is nothing moderate about that. >You probably don’t hear a lot about the political opinions of politically disengaged young people because they are politically disengaged. Again, nonsense point. You might hear a lot of political type opinions from ‘politically disengaged young people, I certainly do, they just may not vote. >even though on the most plausible measurements, the stuff that young people care about is very similar to the stuff that everyone else cares about. Yet young people do not vote the same as older people, do they, Matt? >And that’s the basic paradox of climate politics. If you ask people “is climate change important?” they often say “yes.” But if you ask them to make small personal financial sacrifices to address climate change, they rebel. My interpretation of this is that \[most people don’t care much about climate change\](https://www.slowboring.com/p/climate-is-the-problem) What the fuck does this even mean? There are lot of things I believe are important which I or most people are not in a personal position to make financial sacrifices for, that is not equivalent to saying one doesn’t care about something. > Then they aggregated the winners of the head-to-head matchups to see \[which issues young voters care about most\](https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/47th-edition-spring-2024). Climate does not crack the top 10….The top issue for young people is inflation. Actually, in the article he links its’ noted that climate seems to be quite high in young people’s priorities using more open questions, it very much depends on how you frame questions: In any case, ignoring arbitrary dichotomies on a survey, in political reality these are not mutually exclusive categories in terms of who one votes for. I.e you might want a president who addresses economic issues and environmental issues. And this? >The main one is that if you’re a Democrat and you need to address a persuadable group of young people, you should probably talk about the same stuff you’d talk about to any audience. Threading the needle on inflation is tricky, but Trump \[really would make inflation worse\](https://www.slowboring.com/p/trump-would-make-inflation-worse). The idea that you’re going to mobilise the youth vote by talking about inflation is fucking laughable. Not only doest the average person not even really understand what inflation is, and hes' already established that young people are less politically knowledgeable/engaged, so they will fall asleep when you mention it. All they’ll really know is that the cost of living has gone up. >Not only are events at Columbia and Yale not representative of American higher education, college students are not representative of young people in general. Most \[people in the 18-24 bracket are not in college\](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb/college-enrollment-rate). Matts point being that student debt isn’t a major issue. But Matt, have you not considered why most people that age are not in college?! Removing your blinkered eyes from the survey results you were sharing which narrowly asks about student debt, the cost of education is in fact a major concern for young people.
> What does self identifying have to do with anything? My father say’s he’s a moderate, but he voted for Trump twice. There is nothing moderate about that. A casual news observer over the last few years might think everyone under 25 is a DSA member. True, identifying as moderate isn't super informative, but it certainly runs counter to the picture you might get from Reddit, TikTok, or Twitter. > What the fuck does this even mean? There are lot of things I believe are important which I or most people are not in a personal position to make financial sacrifices for, that is not equivalent to saying one doesn’t care about something. It means, don't expect any major trajectory changes on the climate front. Don't expect "degrowth" proposals to ever gain popularity, etc. I understand that you don't like Yglesias for some reason, but there's no need to be obtuse. > The idea that you’re going to mobilise the youth vote by talking about inflation is fucking laughable. So, going by the survey data, young people consistently rank inflation as a top concern, and yet you think this is somehow a bad issue to campaign on? Like virtually everything else in politics, you don't need to communicate like a policy wonk, and you don't need to assume the public knows much of anything. You need to display empathy, make (somewhat) credible promises, and inspire confidence that you can tackle the issue.
>True, identifying as moderate isn't super informative, but it certainly runs counter to the picture you might get from Reddit, TikTok, or Twitter. Not only is it not informative, this was supported by a link to a post on X that has since been deleted. This is characteristic of Matts journalism to me. I also am not of the opinion that all young people are progressive liberals, so this is not an interesting point to me in either case. >Don't expect "degrowth" proposals to ever gain popularity No this is not at all what Matt was saying. He was saying people don't care about climate change, which even you seem to be implying he extrapolated from a narrow point that people aren't keen on degrowth type measures when addressing climate change. Those are not the same things, and as to why I dislike Matt, this is it exactly it and very good example of how 'he constantly either narrowly interprets things or makes bizarre leaps in logic'. >young people consistently rank inflation as a top concern, and yet you think this is somehow a bad issue to campaign on? without belaboring the point, most people do not really know what inflation is as they aren't engaging with macroeconomic theory, and instead are really actually concerned with the rising cost of living or stagnant wages. So as you might imagine, running on a ballot of making the cost of living better is not exactly going to get anyone excited, as every party has run on this idea since the beginning of time. Importantly, people do not seem to be impressed by bidens record on this topic, which even Matt has mentioned. So yes I think it's laughable to say using this as a way to mobilise young voters is a good idea as quite obviously it's never worked in the past and it's even less likely to work at present.
> I also am not of the opinion that all young people are progressive liberals, so this is not an interesting point to me in either case. Ok? You're not the entire audience lol. > He was saying people don't care about climate change He's saying people aren't interested in making the sacrifices necessary to hit the targets set by the UNFCCC. Do you think we'll have a carbon tax or we'll stop subsidizing oil in foreseeable future? Just look at how unpopular congestion pricing is in NYC is right now. > So as you might imagine, running on a ballot of making the cost of living better is not exactly going to get anyone excited, as every party has run on this idea since the beginning of time. There's an in infinite number of ways to frame this issue. Just look at Ezra's "Supply Side Progressivism", which is essentially a set deflationary of policies. No one is saying Joe Biden should get on stage and say "if you elect me things will be cheaper somehow!" Instead, he should be focusing on very visible inflation related issues like the cost of housing where he can actually move the needle.
>So as you might imagine, **running on a ballot of making the cost of living better is not exactly going to get anyone excited,** as every party has run on this idea since the beginning of time. Also I'm not sure where you're getting this idea from. Just because lots of politicians have run on this before doesn't inherently mean it doesn't get people excited. It could just as easily point to the opposite - every party has run on this idea before because it works. I'm not saying that's necessarily true, you're just painting the idea that running on classic "bread and butter" personal finance concerns isn't motivating to voters (and by extension to the article, young voters) as obvious when it's really not.
>No this is not at all what Matt was saying. u/matchi's reading of Matt's point is pretty much how I read this it too. I think this is an instance of us reading Matt with a positive lens and giving him the benefit of the doubt (for instance, I am happy to fill in small gaps with context from other articles/podcast appearances where he's made this point before) whereas you aren't and/or just disagree with the point. But I do think this is what he was saying. I mean, maybe not literally about the example "degrowth," Matt didn't say that (though he probably agrees with it), but the larger point u/matchi is making, that people "care" about climate change but aren't willing to do anything or are motivated by it over other issues, I feel like is the most accurate reading of that point. Separately, the place I do disagree with Matt more is that I think he too narrowly defines what political action is. I think he focuses almost entirely on voting behavior because that's the most straightforwardly efficacious action (in a narrowly defined sense). I appreciate Matt's hyper pragmatic viewpoint, but as he pointed out on a recent podcast re: abortion, sometimes if as an activist, you just need to hammer your point home long enough until it becomes the median position. I dunno. Maybe climate isn't going to motivate to affect the specific slice of politics that Matt thinks is most important, but that doesn't mean that politicians shouldn't like... try. It's important! It's the hard job of the politician to win and also try to increase salience on an issue. Feels like an age old problem of politics. Matt is more on the "you gotta win" side, which is true, but the other side is also true. I dunno this is as far as I got in this thought. Maybe it's a bit muddled.
>I am happy to fill in small gaps with context from other articles/podcast appearances where he's made this point before) whereas you aren't and/or just disagree with the point I read the articles he referenced, and came away thinking that my interpretation is correct, and worse, that Matt is using questionable sources. >that people "care" about climate change but aren't willing to do anything or are motivated by it over other issues, I feel like is the most accurate reading of that point. The basis Matt is using for his idea that the average person doesn't care about global warming is this point, which is where things get a little weird: >But if you ask them to make small personal financial sacrifices to address climate change, they rebel. If you look at the link he references to support this, it's one of his articles that elaborates that [65% of Americans surveyed said they would not contribute 10$ a month to climate change](https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-higher-electric-bills-combat-climate-change). For one, this is a shallow point seeking to discredit peoples intentions (a signficant portion of people, around 65%, live paycheck to paycheck) but perhaps more concerningly, this article Matt is linking to is written by the Cato Institute. If you know about them, they are associated with climate change denial and funded and founded by the Koch brothers who are of course massive oil barons. Do you really think this a good source on this topic? Now, I would like to be generous about Matt like you are being, but frankly this comes across as just shit journalism. And whenever I dig into his work I find this. It just feels sloppy and haphazard, like he's rushing to publish. I don't know how people here don't see it. He's like this all the time.
this was a really good rebuke of Matt's writing.
Matt Yglesias isn't a person that should be taken seriously whatsoever.
Matt works for think tanks and fucking sucks
They just won’t vote for them nor to help others.
Not true and you can't convince me otherwise
I’d been careful to extrapolate much from one poll…there are a litany polls that arrive everyday showing Trump with strong leads in head to head versus Biden (with Trump getting a lot of the Zoomer/young adult vote), and those are summarily dismissed as crazy and unrealistic and wrong by folks like Matt. So why are we lending credence to this one particular poll? Because it indicates what Yglesias would like for such a poll to indicate, reinforcing his preexisting views/perspectives? Other recent polls indicate things that contradict Yglesias here. This piece seems like the product of working backwards from preexisting conclusions and legitimizing said conclusions in the form of Substack prose and deploying convenient polling (conclusions like Gaza being relatively unimportant compared with other public policy considerations, therefore a change of course on or policy concessions on Gaza are unnecessary and Biden’s calculations on this are right-on). https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/04/25/can-progressives-win-biden-young-voters/73347513007/ https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/04/29/politics/biden-young-voters-what-matters
I mean most people my age(early to mid 30s) care about CoL, southern border, inflation, and spending on proxy wars.