Can Biden Connect with Youth and Minorities?
Article by Computer Curry, TPT Staff Writer
The 2024 election seems to be the most tumultuous and, in some aspects, the most surprising election in recent years. This battle pits two adversaries who have known each other for decades: Joe Biden, the 81-year-old Democrat from Delaware who was its longest-serving senator and the vice president for Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, the 77-year-old diametrically opposed Republican from New York whose real estate business was sued in 1973 for racial discrimination. After the 2020 election conspiracies, which sowed seeds of Republican distrust among the Biden administration, the Biden administration has been carefully scrutinized, villainized, and sometimes even outright defamed by Trump’s Republican base. But in the face of Trump’s actions and his conviction in a criminal trial today, which has made him the only president in American history to be convicted of a crime, many believe that race should have no question as to who wins and who loses. However, new polling data paints a much more complicated picture from the perspective of the youth and ethnic minority constituencies. According to polling data from the Catalist, in 2020, Biden led African American voters, Hispanic voters, and voters younger than 30 years of age by 79, 35, and 23 points, respectively, as compared to Trump. However, in 2024, Biden has 3 points less than Trump for young voters, according to a poll by the New York Times. Almost every single poll taken this year as compared to 4 years ago, shows a significant and noticeable decrease in Black and Hispanic support for Biden’s campaign.
Why is this true, and how should voters in November process this information and make an informed and educated decision? Voters today have become increasingly concerned with Biden’s actions on a multitude of issues, most importantly immigration, climate change, his old age and mental acuity, the economy, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On immigration, younger voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the nation’s immigration policies in proportion to other age groups. A Marist poll showed that only 23% of voters aged 18-29 supported Biden’s immigration policies, compared to 29% of overall voters. On Biden’s mental acuity and whether he has the capacity to serve the nation, a New York Times poll said that 82% of voters in the age 18-29 voting bloc were the most likely to believe that Biden is simply too old and geriatric to be a good, effective president. Despite Trump only being four years younger than Biden, only 61% of 18-29 voters said the same for him. On Biden’s handling of climate change policies, a Pew Research Center poll said that a whopping 26% of voters aged 18-29 said Biden is not doing enough to address the climate crisis and is, in fact, taking America in the wrong direction; in comparison, only a shockingly low in comparison 9% of Democrats 65 and older said the same thing. On the state of the economy, A Marist poll in April showed that only 37% of voters 18-29 supported Biden’s state of affairs and handling of the economy. And on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been disastrously brutal and barbaric since October 7th, based on an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey, voters aged 18-29 were the most likely to say that America is both not giving Palestinians adequate aid and that Israel should receive no support until a ceasefire is in place; 40% and 39% of 18-29-year-olds agreed with those statements, respectively.
These harsh critiques of the Biden administration signal a growing divide between the youth of the country and the older citizens; these two groups clearly both have different visions for the future and beliefs on how Trump and Biden are performing in office. There has been speculation that these poll embarrassments for the Biden administration are simply vacillations that will go back to their higher numbers once we get closer to November and 3rd-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornell West drop out. However, there is also worry among some policymakers that Biden has accumulated too many weaknesses and that such a sudden shift in view from being a temporary fix and a “one-term president” to becoming the possible leader of the nation all the way until 2028 may simply be too much for Americans to accept, especially younger ones who are increasingly more politically active and vigorous for change. Only time will tell if these polls forebode a Trump victory in 2024 or instead are simply a wake-up call prompting the Biden administration to rectify its strategy and reconnect with an increasingly frustrated electorate.
Sources
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/07/14/americans-divided-over-direction-of-bidens-cli mate-change-policies/
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-12-08/biden-los-angeles-fundraising-visit-protests https://www.vox.com/politics/351563/one-explanation-for-the-2024-elections-biggest-mystery https://time.com/6852859/finish-the-job-agenda-biden-youth-activists/ https://millercenter.org/president/trump/life-presidency https://www.npr.org/2024/05/30/nx-s1-4984972/poll-biden-younger-voters-trump