Young Americans Are Losing Faith in the Future — and Trump

What happened

Young Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the country’s direction and are more likely to describe opposition to President Donald Trump as a reason to vote in next month’s congressional elections, Axios reported on October 22.

The report drew on the Harvard Youth Poll, conducted by the Harvard Public Opinion Project with Ipsos from September 30 to October 7 among 2,024 people aged 18 to 29. Among respondents who planned to vote, 63% said their vote for the House or Senate would be cast in opposition to Trump, compared with 14% motivated by support for him and 17% who said he was not a factor.

Seventy-seven percent disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy, while only 9% said the United States was headed in the right direction. Fear about the country’s future outweighed hope by 69% to 26%. Rising prices and the cost of living ranked as the leading threat to respondents’ long-term financial security.

The survey also found weak enthusiasm for voting: only one in three young adults said they would definitely vote, down from 40% in a comparable 2022 measure. The poll’s margin of sampling error was plus or minus 2.61 percentage points for the full sample, with larger margins for voter subgroups.

Image: Mikhail Nilov / Pexels. File photo of young adults holding voting signs; illustrative of youth political engagement, not the poll respondents. Image usage terms.

Sources

• Axios