I’m not sure if this NY Times article is supposed to help Biden or just be an explainer. You know the Times isn’t going to try and hurt him (paywalled NYT article here)
Gaza Isn’t Root of Biden’s Struggles With Young Voters, Polls Show
Young Americans’ outrage over the Israel-Hamas war has dominated the political conversation for weeks. Democratic and Republican lawmakers have made pilgrimages to Columbia University and other campuses to offer support to demonstrations in solidarity with the Gaza Strip or to denounce them, and President Joe Biden addressed the upheavals in remarks Thursday.
But these headlines are not reflective of young voters’ top concerns this election year, according to recent polls. Surveys taken in recent months show young voters are more likely to sympathize with Palestinians in the conflict, but few of them rank the Israel-Hamas war among their top issues in the 2024 election. Like other voters, young people often put economic concerns at the top of the list.
And while young voters are cooler to Biden than they were at the same point in 2020, there is little evidence that American support for the Israeli invasion of Gaza is a critical factor in their relative discontent. (snip)
The latest polling from the Pew Research Center finds 18- to 29-year-olds three times more likely to sympathize with Palestinians in the conflict than those older than 65, and twice as likely as adults as a whole.
“Not necessarily everyone is as fired up about it as we see from those out protesting,” said Laura Silver, the associate director of global research for Pew. “But 18- to 29-year-olds are far and away different from older Americans.”
They’ve been taught to be haters of Israel and Jews and to support Islamic extremists, all without actually knowing the details of the situation.
Recent polls suggest these sympathies have yet to translate into prioritizing the war as a voting issue in 2024.
In the Harvard Institute of Politics’ Youth Poll conducted shortly before the past month’s wave of campus demonstrations and crackdowns, 18- to 29-year-old Americans overwhelmingly faulted Biden for his handling of the conflict in Gaza, with 76% disapproving and 18% approving. But only 2% of them rated it their top concern in the election, compared with 27% who said they were most concerned about economic issues.
In an Economist/YouGov poll taken more recently, in late April, 22% of voters ages 18 to 29 listed inflation as their most important issue. Two percent named foreign policy as their top concern. (The poll did not specifically ask about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.)
The youts have learned by experience that Biden’s economic policies are not particularly good for their own lives. Gaza is just some ideal that they’re cosplaying, seeing the cost of living skyrocket while the Biden admin makes it worse personal.
That said, Gaza is not helping with all those youts who are cosplaying as revolutionaries, then going home to their family’s mansion and having someone do their laundry before going out to a fancy party. These are the people who mostly do not understand the issues, just talking points. If Trump was smart he really would focus his campaign on economics, minimize all the other stuff he usually yammers about.
