Most Americans under the age of 30 don’t approve of President Donald Trump or either party in Congress, according to a new poll released Wednesday. But Democratic officials and strategists told NOTUS they believe the party can win over disengaged young people.
A poll of 18- to 29-year-olds released Wednesday by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School found that only 15% of respondents believed the country was headed in the right direction, with less than 30% approving of the president or either party in Congress. The poll, known as the Harvard Youth Poll, also found that congressional Democrats’ approval rating has halved (from 42% in 2017 to 23% this year), while support for congressional Republicans has hovered around 29%.
The survey shows just how much Democrats need to do to win over the young people they lost to President Donald Trump and those who skipped voting entirely. Democratic operatives say the party is working on its messaging to better appeal to people under 30.
“The way that we do it is by showing at a local level, a state level and congressional level, how we are fighting to address issues that everybody, no matter their age, cares about,” David Hogg, a Democratic National Committee vice chair, told NOTUS. “We need to make it more real in how we talk about it and highlight the real stories of how young people are struggling.”
Although a majority of young voters supported Kamala Harris for president, she underperformed past winning Democratic candidates, according to exit polling. Those polls indicated that the economy and jobs were the top considerations for voters under 30.
More than 40% of Americans under 30 said they were struggling to get by financially, according to the new Harvard Youth Poll.
Although it’s early in the election cycle, progressive organizer Joseph Geevarghese told NOTUS that if early signs are a tell, young voters will likely be animated by “quality-of-life” issues.
“The surest way to win is on quality-of-life and economic issues,” Geevarghese said. “It’s a little premature to say what’s going to win yet. But it’s a part of it.”
Terrance Woodbury, a Democratic strategist whose firm was a pollster for former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign, told NOTUS he has observed a “deep populist streak” among young voters.
He has encouraged Democratic candidates to lean into that populism, much like Sen. Bernie Sanders has done in past election cycles.
“I’ve seen, especially in focus groups, this embrace of people like Luigi Mangione amongst Gen Z, that he’s often seen as a hero,” Woodbury said. “There is an opportunity for Democrats to really seize the populism message, especially when the wealthiest man in the world and the wealthiest cabinet in history are seizing the levers of American government.”
Woodbury said it would be a mistake for Democrats to abandon identity and social issues. The Harvard poll found that 28% of Democratic young people believed “diversity and inclusion” were central to American identity.
“The other lesson Democrats are learning is that we can’t separate identity and politics with young people,” Woodbury said. “Their identities dominate so much of their politics.”
Other Democrats say the party has an authenticity problem to overcome with younger voters.
“Democrats as a whole have learned that lesson,” Niccara Campbell Wallace, who heads Rolling Sea Action Fund, an organization that supports candidates and policy agendas empowering Black Americans, told NOTUS.
Wallace argued that CBC members owe their wins to their authentic methods of engaging voters, and she’s working to expand on last year’s efforts.
Both Rolling Sea Action Fund and CBC PAC are hosting ]in-person events, going on nationwide tours and executing more robust digital campaigns where they engage with top social media influencers in districts they’re targeting in order to win over Americans under 30.
“We are trying to target people that are authentic to their word, just really get our message out and really combat a lot of misinformation and disinformation,” Wallace said.
In Michigan, Detroit Action, a local political group, is connecting young voters to elected officials to not only relay their concerns with the political environment but also to give voters a hand in crafting political messages about salient issues in the city like housing affordability.
“That’s what community organizing is. Like, you won’t be mad over an issue that’s not your issue,” Scott Holiday, the organization’s political director, told NOTUS. “It does us no good to create this top-down approach to narrative building when all of the issue connectivity and the emotion that drives movements and campaigns is right there in your community.”
Woodbury said he’s been encouraging Democratic leadership to embrace recruiting younger candidates to run for office, particularly for Congress.
“When millennials and Gen Z take their rightful place in this body politic, they are going to reform it, reengineer it, rebuild it in ways that are unrecognizable right now,” Woodbury said. “Our current politics will not continue to work the way they currently work when young people are in charge.”
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Tinashe Chingarande is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.