By Manzanita Miller
The fact that President Joe Biden has suffered a catastrophic loss of support among swing voters is something we have covered since the president’s lackluster and halting debate against former President Trump last week. However, a new poll shows that Biden’s debate performance may have utterly tanked his numbers among young voters, a group he desperately needs in November.
A new poll from AtlasIntel, a polling group which was heralded as highly accurate in the 2020 election, has found that Biden trails Trump by 14.6 percentage points with voters under thirty, and less than a third of young people intend to support Biden for president.
Biden’s numbers among young voters have been cratering for months now, as we have extensively covered, but this is perhaps the lowest number on record for Biden among voters under age 30, a group who supported him by 24 percentage points in 2020.
The AtlasIntel poll shows Biden earning a mere 27 percent of the youth vote, while Trump is earning 41.6 percent of their vote. This is a massive 33-point decline for Biden among young voters, and a modest 5.6-point gain for Trump.
Where are the rest of these young voters going? According to the poll, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been the beneficiary of most of the youth vote turning away for Biden, with Kennedy earning 27.7 percent of young voters in the poll. However, it is still worth noting that Trump is beating Kennedy by around 14 percentage points among under thirties.
It also worth noting that the poll was taken the day before and after the debate, meaning the poll did not fully capture Biden’s fallout from the debate. In other words, his standing among young voters could be even worse than the poll is showing.
We know that a majority of Americans say Trump won last week’s debate, appeared more “presidential” than Biden, and more clearly communicated his vision for the country, and young people feel this way strongly.
A YouGov poll conducted after the debate found that young people say Trump won the debate by 19 points, 42 percent to 23 percent, and young people say Trump appeared more presidential (26 percent) than Biden (22 percent) during the debate.
This is in complete contrast to how young people viewed the debate winner in the final debate of the 2020 election. At that time, young pope maintained that Biden beat Trump in the debate by a resounding 39 points. Young people went on to support Biden in November by 24 points.
Biden has been struggling with young people for well over a year now, with pre-debate polling from GenForward showing only 33 percent of young Americans under age 40 plan to support him, a striking decline compared to previous elections.
Biden’s halting performance at the debate last week has only driven those numbers down even further. Currently, well under a third of young people are comfortable supporting Biden for president, and while the vast majority have shifted toward Robert. F. Kennedy Jr., Trump is still ahead of both competitors by fourteen points. Frankly, these numbers are not surprising. Haunting clips of Biden’s dazed split-screen stare and endless parodies of his difficulty communicating have been circulating among young people since the debate, and many appear utterly shocked that Biden was allowed to, or bullied into, running again.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
