Youth vote in the news 6/9
Youth vote in the news 6/9
Biden's odds with young voters of color & young voters top issues, a warning from James Carville, and a new pro-Biden PAC to court young voters.
Happy Sunday! Hope it’s not too scary. There are three youth-vote headlines and one Gen Z stat this week that I want to share.
Wishing you all have a great week :)
After backing him in 2020, a new poll shows some young voters are Biden's to lose, Elena Moore for NPR, 6/5
A new University of Chicago GenForward survey shared exclusively with NPR shows that President Joe Biden has lost ground with younger voters of color since 2020.
A few key pieces of data from the survey, broken down by Moore:
“In 2020, 89% of Black voters aged 18-29 voted for Biden, as well as 78% of those aged 30-44. In the latest GenForward survey, just 33% said they would support him if the election were held today and 23% chose Trump,” Moore writes.
“Trump is beating Biden among young Latino voters by a four-point margin. It’s a significant drop in support for Biden compared to four years ago, when he won 69% of Latino voters under 30, and 62% of those 30-44.”
The same survey shows that despite the fixation on campus protests this spring, the war in Gaza is not young voters top concern when it comes to the 2024 election. Instead, the economy remains their priority (as demonstrated in many of the most trusted youth vote surveys).
James Carville suggests Biden, Trump causing young voters to disengage: ‘My greatest fear,’ Filip Timotija for The Hill, 6/9
The veteran Democratic operative said in a radio interview that his “greatest fear” for the country is that today’s youngest citizens are tuning out.
“The lack of enthusiasm among young people for public policy and public service and being involved in the public square is quite disheartening,” Carville told John Catsimatidis of WABC 770 AM’s “The Cats Roundtable.”
“I can understand it on one level,” Carville said. “I’ve talked to them, and they feel like a lot of things are not working for them. They feel like two 80-year-old guys don’t mean much to them. I am really afraid that we are going to lose the generation of young people … That’s my greatest fear for the United States. That young people are disengaging.”
Hollywood vets and Biden alums launch super PAC to shore up his youth vote problem, Elena Schneider for POLITICO, 6/9
Biden aligned operatives and Hollywood writers have teamed up for the launch of a new PAC to court young Americans — using mediums and language they hope resonates with the voting bloc. “Won’t PAC Down, will raise and spend $20 million to $25 million, according to details shared exclusively with POLITICO,” Schneider reports.
“Those movie industry creatives, with credits from “Saturday Night Live” to “Parks and Recreation” to “Big Mouth,” have been meeting monthly for the last half year in a rented, loft-style conference room in a downtown Los Angeles office building. There, they have pitched everything from 30- and 90-second influencer-style ads that could run on Instagram Reels to highly produced, scripted ads. The group’s first actual ads — which will only appear on social media and streaming platforms — are expected to drop in early July,” she writes.
Names like writer Travis Helwig and youth pollster are involved in writing and research informing the PAC’s decisions.
“We’re not talking about Facebook or Twitter,” Helwig told POLITICO. “We need to meet young people where they are and present them with this information in ways that won’t make them roll their eyes or immediately make fun of the ad they just saw.”