During the 2024 election, I firmly believe Trump would have lost had he not swung younger voters behind his campaign.
I was ecstatic to see the strategy, but I had also stated that Trump was only going to get one chance at this demographic.
If he did not deliver, they would abandon him, and, according to recent polling, they are abandoning him.
Harris was doing podcasts, but she did not have the same focus as Trump.
Trump tapped his son Barron to help him pick the most popular podcasters for Gen Z to go into strange territory in an effort to draw in younger voters.
The strategy worked. Trump was quickly a hit, and younger voters started to flock to support him.
But again, these were young voters who already felt deceived by the Democrat Party, and just wanted someone to keep their word about the issues pertaining specifically to them.
Younger voters typically vote for progressive candidates. And while Harris and Walz did have the majority of these voters, they did not win the share Democrats typically capture in an election.
A key issue for these voters was the fact that Democrats were degrading men, literally, as well as calling anyone out for daring to step out of the norm. We all remember the video of Obama berating a group of young black men for daring not to support Harris, right?
The biggest reason, however, was likely the economy, one that the middle-class was getting chewed up and spit out.
Trump promised a better economy on day one, and that did not happen. Are we doing better? Absolutely, but it is not what people were promised, and that’s the problem. Politicians always overpromise, but it takes a few years for people to realize they are all full of it. So this hit hard.
The latest Economist/YouGov poll is not good news for Trump, but it will hopefully serve as a wake-up call to try to get these voters back into the fold quickly.
Trump’s favorability rating at the start of the term for voters under 30 was +5, now it’s -51. For voters 33-44, he was -6, but now he is -17. And for voters 65 and over, Trump was -4, but he is now -16. Trump’s bread and butter, which is voters between the ages of 45-64, Trump was +12, and now he is even.
Overall, Gen Z voters swung from 50% approval to 75% disapproval, with 55% strongly disapproving of the job he is doing. On the economy, 72% disapprove, and on inflation, 72% disapprove.
Now, this is only one poll, so there is no need to panic, but Trump cannot ignore these voters if he wants to help the GOP win again in 2026 and 2028. When people are this upset, they feel ignored, lied to, and are either going to become disenfranchised or vote the other way. I would suggest that Trump go back and listen to his podcasts and start to address those issues, then start doing them again to address the issues and tell these voters how he is going to put a fix in place. If he doesn’t, he will lose these voters forever.
