Kamala Harris avoided answering a question about Joe Biden’s approval among young voters despite a significant decline in his poll ratings. Instead, she highlighted his record on issues that he has tried to appeal to them on.
At the beginning of Biden’s presidency, around 70 percent of voters under the age of 30 believed he was doing a good job, according to CBS News/YouGov polling. However, this number dropped to 49 percent by early September.
The same poll reported that Harris had a vice presidential approval rating of 41 percent, which increased to 55 percent among voters under 30. Younger Americans typically vote for Democrats, but Biden’s age and challenges from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, who may attract left-wing voters, have raised concerns.
The poll surveyed 2,335 U.S. adults, including 486 individuals under the age of 30, from September 5-8.
When questioned about their relatively low popularity, Harris responded to CBS News, saying, “If you poll how young people feel about the climate and the warming of our planet, it polls as one of their top concerns. When we talk about what we’re doing with student loan debt, [it] polls very high.
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“The challenge that we have as an administration is we’ve got to let people know who brung [sic] it to them. That’s our challenge, but it is not that the work we are doing is not very, very popular with a lot of people.”
Newsweek contacted the White House via email for a comment.
A July Washington Post/University of Maryland poll confirmed that a majority of Americans view climate change as a significant problem, if not a crisis.
According to a Pew Research Center survey of 10,329 adults conducted between May 30 and June 4, 50 percent of U.S. adults believed that the Biden administration was taking the nation in the wrong direction on climate change, while 45 percent felt it was heading in the right direction. However, support for Biden’s green agenda increased to 64 percent among Democrats aged 18-29 and was even higher among older age groups.
While Biden has advocated for a green economy through the passage of his Inflation Reduction Act, he has faced criticism for approving new oil and gas projects, such as the Willow Project in Alaska. Some supportive Democrats argued that, during the transition to renewable energy, it would be more environmentally responsible to source oil and gas domestically than to import it.
An Ipsos Mori/USA Today poll of 1,029 American adults conducted between April 14-16 found that 47 percent supported Biden’s student debt relief plan, which increased to 83 percent among the 399 individuals who had student loan debt.
Biden continued to suspend federal student loan repayments during the coronavirus pandemic as many anticipated the economic consequences of the national emergency. He also pledged to forgive some of the debts of the 43.6 million borrowers.
The president had aimed to reduce the debt of eligible student borrowers by at least $10,000, but this was blocked by the Supreme Court. The government has since announced it will forgive $39 billion in debt for 804,000 borrowers through another legal mechanism in a revised version of Biden’s original plan. It has also offered ways to ease the reintroduction of loan repayments for those facing difficulties.
In response to polling indicating waning support for the Biden administration among Black voters, the White House announced that Harris would embark on a month-long tour of academic institutions in at least seven states with historically diverse student populations.
In a statement, Harris described the younger generation as “critical” and added, “My message to students is clear: We are counting on you, we need you, you are everything.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.