Trump, Biden in virtual tie among young voters: poll
Democrat President Joe Biden and Republican former President Donald Trump are in a virtual tie for the support of younger voters heading into the 2024 election, according to a recently released poll.
According to a New York Times/Siena College survey released last week, 30% of voters aged 18-29 said they would vote for Biden, while 29% said they would vote for Trump. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. grabbed 34% support of young voter respondents.
Additionally, only 30% of young voters said they “strongly approve” or “somewhat approve” of Biden’s job as president. By contrast, 64% of the demographic said they either “strongly disapprove” or “somewhat disapprove” of his job performance.
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Meanwhile, 39% of young voter respondents said they held either a “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” opinion of Trump, with 50% saying they held a “very unfavorable” or “somewhat unfavorable” opinion of the former president.
For their report, the NY Times and Siena drew from a sample of 3,662 registered voters living in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, conducted via telephone from Oct. 22 to Nov. 3, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points for all registered voters, and a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points for “the likely electorate.”
The close numbers for younger voters between Trump and Biden is considered surprising, as Biden easily won the demographic in the 2020 election, reported The Hill.
“Young people as we know have always been fiercely independent,” said John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, as quoted by The Hill.
“It’s a more cynical electorate with God knows how many more independentcandidacies, which on the youth cohort are more likely to hurt Biden more than Trump.”
The same NY Times Siena poll also found that Trump was leading Biden in five of six “swing states”: Arizona (49% vs. 44%), Georgia (49% vs. 43%), Michigan (48% vs. 43%), Nevada (52% vs. 41%) and Pennsylvania (48% vs. 44%). In Wisconsin, Biden led Trump by a slim margin of 47% vs. 45%.
In September, The Washington Post and ABC News released a poll in which 51% of respondents said they would vote for Trump, while 42% said they would vote for Biden.
Conducted by Abt Associates, The Washington Post/ABC poll drew from a survey conducted Sept. 15-20 of 1,006 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
