Gaza is not the root of Biden’s struggles with young voters, polls show

Young Americans’ outrage over the Israel-Hamas war has dominated political debate for weeks. Democratic and Republican lawmakers have made pilgrimages to Columbia University and other campuses to support demonstrations of solidarity with the Gaza Strip or to denounce them, and President Joe Biden addressed the seizures in comments on Thursday.

But these headlines do not reflect the main concerns of young voters this election year, according to recent polls. Surveys carried out in recent months show that young voters are more likely to sympathize with the Palestinians in the conflict, but few of them rank the Israel-Hamas war among their main issues in the 2024 elections. Like other voters, young people often place their economic concerns top the list.

And although young voters are cooler toward Biden than at the same time in 2020, there is little evidence that American support for the Israeli invasion of Gaza is a critical factor in their relative discontent.

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“When you have two presidents who have the same position on an issue, that automatically puts that issue — I hate to say it further down the list, because it’s obviously an important issue, but it doesn’t make it an issue where I’m at. I will choose donald trump about Joe Biden,” said Devon Schwartz, a student at the University of Texas at Austin.

A student of Muslim and Jewish descent who actively participates in a university group that promotes interreligious dialogue, Schwartz, 19, considered that the protests at his college, which provoked police repression, were “a historic moment”. And he said he would have welcomed the opportunity to vote for a candidate who was “more progressive on Israel” than Biden in November. But he plans to vote for him anyway.

“I want to see changes in Joe Biden’s policies,” he said. “I don’t want to vote for Donald Trump and then see the exact same policies.”

American sympathies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have shifted modestly toward the Palestinians over the past decade. Although 51% of Americans continue to be more supportive of the Israelis, 27% are now more sympathetic to the Palestinian people, up from 12% in 2013, according to Gallup.

The shift is substantially generational, most likely reflecting not only changes in the conflict itself and a rightward shift in Israeli politics, but also a decade in which pro-Palestinian activists worked to link the cause to domestic movements in the United States, such as the Black Lives Matter and campaigns to divest from Israel have gained ground on college campuses.

The latest Pew Research Center survey reveals that young people between the ages of 18 and 29 are three times more likely to sympathize with the Palestinians in the conflict than those over 65, and twice as likely as adults in general.

“Not necessarily everyone is as excited about this as we see with the protests,” said Laura Silver, associate director of global research at Pew. “But 18- to 29-year-olds are far different than older Americans.”

Recent polls suggest that these sympathies have not yet translated into the prioritization of war as an electoral issue in 2024.

In the Harvard Politics Institute’s youth poll, conducted just before last month’s wave of campus demonstrations and crackdowns, Americans ages 18 to 29 overwhelmingly criticized Biden for his handling of the conflict in Gaza, with 76% disapproving and 18% approving. But only 2% of them considered this their main concern in the elections, compared to 27% who said they were more concerned about economic issues.

In a more recent Economist/YouGov poll conducted at the end of April, 22% of voters aged 18 to 29 listed inflation as their most important issue. Two percent named foreign policy as their main concern. (The poll did not specifically ask about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.)

“My friends and I are all very concerned about the war in the Middle East and we disagree with the Biden administration’s agenda in that country,” said Coral Lin, 20, a Duke University student. She said she had a friend who voted “noncommittal” in the Democratic primary in protest of the issue.

“But I still know a lot of people who hold that view and still vote for Biden,” she said, noting that her own concerns about the climate and her belief that Trump poses a threat to democracy led her to continue supporting Biden. .

Clara Getty, 21, a University of Virginia student and Biden supporter, said she saw parallels with Lyndon Johnson’s troubles in the 1968 Democratic primary as he faced outrage over the Vietnam War — and a cautionary tale. “He has made so much progress on domestic issues that I think he could have benefited greatly from a second term,” she said. “And I think a lot of things are similar for Biden.”

Others argued, however, that even if the Gaza conflict did not lead to a mass exodus of young voters for Trump, it could pose problems for Biden if young people did not vote.

“You hear a lot of people who are increasingly apathetic about voting for Joe Biden,” said Cameron Driggers, a 19-year-old University of Florida student and member of the state Democratic Party’s youth council.

An organizer of the Israel divestment campaign on his campus, Driggers noted that Biden would need not just votes but also young organizers to win in 2024, including many who have become active in protest politics around Gaza.

“He continues to basically spit in the face of youth organizers across the country,” he said. “He’s especially infuriating people who vote.”

In a statement, Mia Ehrenberg, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, highlighted the campaign’s investments in its own campus organizers and youth groups, and its intention to “continue to show up and communicate with young voters about the issues facing interests them”, including the climate. change, gun laws and student loans.

The Biden administration recently announced more changes to student loan payments, and Biden has instructed his administration to consider reclassifying marijuana as a less serious drug. Her campaign promoted her stance on social media platform X at exactly 4:20 pm on April 20th.

Driggers said he broadly supported Biden before the Gaza invasion, citing his moves to liberalize marijuana policies, support for labor rights and withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan. But his support was tested by Gaza.

“I recognize that Trump will almost certainly be worse than Biden on all of these issues,” he said. “But at a certain point, you know, there has to be a limit” for Biden. “And I believe he’s close to crossing that.”

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