US Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump.
Brendan McDermid | Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
Younger Americans don’t seem to hold Vice President Kamala Harris responsible for what many of them believe is a worsening U.S. economy under the Biden-Harris administration, according to a new survey by CNBC and Generation Lab.
The latest quarterly Youth & Money Survey, conducted after Biden left the race in July, finds that 69% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 believe the economy is getting worse under President Joe Biden.
But they also believe the best candidate to improve the economy is de facto Democratic nominee Harris, not Republican nominee and former president Donald Trump.
Harris was seen as the best candidate for the economy by 41% of those polled, while 40% chose Trump, while 19% said the economy would do better under someone else, such as the third-party candidate of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s party.
The results represent a seven-point swing in favor of Democrats on the economy since CNBC asked the same question in May’s Youth & Money survey. At the time, only 34% of respondents believed that Biden, then the presumptive Democratic nominee, was the best candidate to stimulate the economy, with 40% choosing Trump and 25% saying Kennedy.
The shift in voting to support Harris is even wider among respondents overall. If the presidential election were held today, the latest poll showed Harris with a 12-point lead over Trump among younger Americans, 46 percent to 34 percent, while 21 percent said they would vote for either Kennedy or another candidate.
Three months ago, the same survey found Trump and Biden virtually tied, with 36% for Biden and 35% for Trump, and 29% planning to vote for Kennedy.
That jump in support for Harris today is all the more remarkable because of how important the economy is to the voting choices of younger Americans.
According to new CNBC survey data, the “economy and cost of living” was cited more than any other issue when respondents were asked what would influence their decisions about who to vote for, with 66% of respondents naming it among their top three. In second place with 34% was “access to abortion and reproductive rights,” followed by “gun violence/control” with 26%.
However, these results also contain warning signs for Harris and the Democratic Party.
To win the White House, Harris will likely need to do even better among young people in November than her current 12-point lead in the CNBC and Generation Lab poll.
“Bidenomics” may not weigh heavily on Harris
With less than 90 days to go before Election Day on November 5, these new results could have major implications for a presidential contest that has been changed by Biden’s decision to drop out.
As pollsters scramble to gather data on how Harris’ candidacy changes — or doesn’t — the race, one of the biggest unanswered questions for both parties is whether Americans will transfer their well-documented frustration with Biden after years of high inflation and high interest rates, straight to Harris.
These findings suggest that the political appeal of “Bidenomics” has so far not rubbed off on Harris — at least not on younger people.
In 2020, for example, Biden won over 18- to 29-year-old voters by a margin of 24 percentage points, with 59% of the vote to Trump’s 35%.
And while young people have long been a critical constituency for Democratic candidates, this year, depending on which states Kennedy appears on the ballot, the embattled anti-vaccine independent may still be able to take enough votes away from Harris to to limit its general set. margins.
Turnout is also a potential problem for Democrats. The 18- to 34-year-old cohort makes up about a quarter of the total U.S. population, or about 76 million people, according to US Census Bureau data. During the last presidential election of 2020, 57% of this age group went out to vote.
In this survey, 77% of respondents said they would either definitely or probably vote. But in previous elections, the number of people who say they intend to vote is usually far greater than those who actually vote.
The economy is still a wild card
Finally, as is always the case in elections, the economy itself could either hurt or help Harris, depending on where he goes.
For example, this poll was conducted between July 22 and July 29, before the latest jobs report showed a contraction, sparking new fears of an economic recession.
It was also taken before the market sell-off on August 5, which was partly caused by fears stemming from the short-term jobs report.
Meanwhile, most polls that sample all adults, not just young people, still show Trump holding the edge when it comes to which candidates voters trust most to improve the economy.
Any more bad economic news between now and November could see voters blame Harris — who has yet to fully articulate an economic agenda different from Biden’s — and return to the perceived safety of Trump’s familiar economic agenda.
The survey involved 1,043 adults between the ages of 18 and 34, with a margin of error of 3.0%.
