Former Vice-President Joe Biden is having a pretty good week. Not only has he posted his highest fundraising numbers, but new studies also show the presumptive Democratic nominee making gains on his opponent in the 2020 general election. A new poll found that he holds a sizable lead among young voters.
The Harvard Institute of Politics conducted a survey of young voters from March 11 to March 23. During this time they found that Biden was favored 60 percent to 30 percent over Donald Trump for those ages 18-29 and 51 percent to 28 percent among all young Americans. The numbers also show that Biden’s support among the demographic is comparable to what Sanders would have received if he were the nominee.
Though the findings are likely a welcomed discovery for the campaign that has often failed to connect with young voters, John Della Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, warns that the support should not be taken for granted. “Currently, they are giving him the benefit of the doubt,” Volpe said in an interview with USA Today. “There are a lot of young people who preferred Sanders, voted for Sanders, but are willing to say in a two-person matchup, they’d be with Biden right now. He cannot take that cohort for granted. And my read over his activities the last few weeks is that he’s not taking them for granted.”
Volpe believes that young people are uniting on the front of defeating Trump. Less than 10 percent of surveyors believe that the country under his administration is working as it should be. Young voters are calling for reform. That includes reform to student loan debt challenges and reforming American institutions. Nearly three quarters of young Whites believe the election will make a difference in their lives compared with just 52 percent of young Blacks.
Cathy Sun, chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project, says the poll highlights young voters’ “struggles with economic insecurity, confrontations with racial inequity and disillusionment with political platitudes.” Pollsters dug deep to unearth their political beliefs and “desire for generational change.”