By Manzanita Miller
There is no shortage of polling showing President Joe Biden suffering steep losses among both young and minority voters compared to 2020, but new data reveals a compounding effect with Black, Hispanic and Asian voters under age 40 deserting the president in droves.
According to the University of Chicago’s latest GenForward survey, just a third of young Americans under age 40 plan to support Biden, a striking decline in support compared to previous elections.
This gives Biden a mere two-point advantage over former President Donald Trump in the survey, with Biden earning 33 percent of the vote to Trump’s 31 percent and a broad 21 percent of young Americans choosing someone else while 11 percent commit to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The poll shows Biden leading Trump among young Black voters by just ten percentage points, 33 percent to 23 percent, with a quarter of young Black voters supporting someone else. Among young Hispanics, Trump is outright beating Biden by four points – 32 percent to 28 percent –with 28 percent supporting someone else.
These numbers are a stark contrast to 2020, when young nonwhite voters overwhelmingly supported Biden, and underscore a key coalition Democrats are at risk of losing – younger minority voters. What it also underscores is the wide interest in third-party candidates among nonwhite voters, however, the bulk of Biden’s declines cannot be attributed to that alone.
Last presidential election, Biden beat Trump by a jaw-dropping 79 percentage points among Black voters under 30, and 59 points among Black voters aged 30-44, but those wide margins are contracting significantly. In 2020, Biden beat Trump by slightly slimmer margins among young Hispanics. He beat Trump by 41 points among Latinos under 30 and by 28 points among Latinos 30-44.
Again, the current GenForward survey shows Biden beating Trump among Blacks under age 40 by a mere ten percentage points and losing Hispanics under 40 by four points. These numbers are vast, almost unbelievable, but as we’ve covered in other articles recently, there is ample evidence supporting a vast decline in youth and minority support for Biden, accelerated in the past two years.
We have covered other research validating a strong shift among younger minorities away from Democrats in recent months. First, a recent poll from UnidosUS found that new Latino voters who were added to the voter pool after 2016 or 2020 – younger voters, largely – are much less likely to be Democrats than voters who’ve been in the voter pool for several election cycles.
The report finds that almost 40 percent of the Latino electorate this November will be new voters compared to the 2016 election, and newer registered Latinos are much younger than the voter population as a whole, with a full 80% of newer Latino voters clocking in at age 39 or younger. The report also notes that newer voters are fourteen points less likely to be Democrats compared to established voters (just 45 percent of newer voters identify as Democrat, compared to 59 percent of more established voters). Newer voters are also much more likely to be independent (36 percent) compared to older voters (18 percent) and newer voters are only slightly less likely to be Republican (18 percent) compared to established voters (23 percent).
With regard to Black Americans, data from AEI’s survey for American life last fall found that Biden’s approval rating among younger Blacks is significantly lower than it is among older Blacks and that younger Blacks are less likely to say Democrats look out for the working-class.
The Democratic Party is hollowing itself out by ignoring the needs of working-class and younger Americans who are heavily driven by issues like inflation, housing prices, wage stagnation, and the immigration crisis. Democrats lost the working-class white vote in much the same way – ignoring or dismissing these voters and focusing on pet projects that held little value to the average American. Without a strategy to address economic concerns, Biden may be remembered as the president who tipped the scales and ushered in a working-class coalition on the right.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
