Exclusive: First look at SocialSphere survey of young voters for Snap

New findings on top political stressors of young voters, youth's views about the Biden and Trump records, what the future could bring -- and a look to see what the "Double Haters" are thinking

The Backdrop

Thanks to friends at Snapchat for allowing me to build upon what I learned from the most recent edition of the Harvard Youth Poll -- and share additional insights about the youth vote.

We surveyed 2,173 registered voters aged between 18 and 29 from April 5 to April 9, 2024. The topics explored in the survey include:

• Favorability and job performance ratings of Biden, Harris, Trump, Democrats, Republicans in Congress

• Candidate preferences in 2 and 5-person match-ups

• Perceptions of life under Biden and Trump administrations

• Outlooks for second Biden and Trump terms

• Stress levels associated with economic, political, and other issues

The survey was conducted online and carries a 95 percent credibility level of +/- 2.1 percentage points.

Here is the topline, key findings, and slides. I will be on Morning Joe around 7:40 AM Friday morning to discuss this, and also on MSNBC’s 11th Hour for more conversation and analysis. IMO, below are a few of the more compelling findings. Let me know what you think.

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

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My Three Takeaways

#1: A quarter of the youth are "Double Haters," meaning they have unfavorable views of both Biden and Trump. They favor Biden 2:1.

Unfortunately, in today’s politics, the subgroup of voters with negative feelings about both candidates seems to be gaining prominence. Youth are anything but immune. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are “underwater” in their favorability and job performance metrics. As the chart below indicates, the only one of five people or groups included in our survey where more people held positive rather than negative views (barely and not within margin of error) is the Democrats in Congress.

Things get more interesting when we look at the preference of these “Double Haters” relative to the youth electorate overall. When young voters tell us they will vote for the “lesser of two evils,” that translates to a vote for Joe Biden most of the time. Fifty-six percent (56%) of this group favors Biden in a two-way match-up, while 26% side with Trump.

This group, of course, is the primary target for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and so far, his campaign is attracting more of these “Double Haters” than any other. He’s in a dead heat with “don’t know,” with Biden trailing by nine and in second place.

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#2: More than 2-in-5 young voters feel "a lot of stress" about the cost of living today; nothing else comes close.

With the heat surrounding college campuses with pro-Palestinian encampments, I am often asked the question of how representative these protests are of college students or their generation. The answer is that they are not.

One of the more noteworthy findings from the Harvard Youth Poll was that issues related to Israel/Gaza and a permanent ceasefire are important — but among young voters writ large — they do not currently have the salience of a handful of economic issues related to the cost of living — including the cost of healthcare and housing.

In a youth poll I conducted in February (and I realize opinions can evolve quickly), 33% of young voters reported that creating a ceasefire was “very important” in the context of the presidential campaign, 26% said the same about providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Sixty-eight percent (68%) reported curbing inflation was very important, 67% reducing gun violence and school shootings, 66% ensuring greater access to health care, and 61% accessing affordable housing.

In the Snap survey, we asked voters how much 13 individual issues weighed on them on a given day — how stressful they were — and you can see below that the economy is adding more than its share of stress to nearly half of young voters today.

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#3. Young voters believe the economy and their finances were in better shape when Trump was in office; they see race relations as better under Biden. America’s vibe … it’s a toss-up.

It’s important to appreciate that every cohort of young voters is different — and the newest group of first-time voters came of age in a challenging time — they dealt with Covid-19 lockdowns while in high school or their early college years. They were acutely impacted by inflation and the cost of living. They rate the job performance of Donald Trump (43%) slightly better than Joe Biden’s (35%) at present — and by a two-to-one margin, they say their finances were better under Trump than Biden. Young voters believe that race relations were undeniably better under Biden than under Trump, and compared to Trump, Biden also gets credit for individual liberties and freedoms and the climate.

On the question of under whose watch was America’s overall vibe better, youth were evenly divided: 34% Biden, 33% Trump, and 33% about the same or don’t know. (Remember, I am just the messenger here.)

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The Bottom Line

In an earlier post, I posited that the 2024 youth vote reads more like 2012 than 2016 and 2020. This dataset makes me more confident in this position than not. The information gap between young people and politics is as significant as I’ve ever recalled. This means that many young people have not yet, at least, weighed the differences between the candidates -- or even their records while occupying the White House. 

Among young people who follow the news and are politically engaged, Biden shines. Young voters who talk about politics and current events daily prefer Joe Biden ny 19 points, 58%-39%; for those who rarely talk politics, Trump leads by low single digits.

The problem, especially for Democrats, who need every young voter they can get, is that a broad swath of Gen Z and young millennials have low expectations about what a second Biden term might achieve; many fear that things like the economy, inequality, the border, the plight of Palestinian people, and our image overseas could get worse.

In this cycle, many young people recognize that their vote counts — but they need to see that it matters. This poll shows that Biden’s lead has the potential to grow — it can potentially match his 2020 number of 60% nationally, but it’s going to have to break the social media algorithms and find a way to draw distinctions between the two president’s records from the past — at the same time painting a portrait of an America that offers opportunity for every young person to earn a good living, afford a home, be safe from gun violence, have access to quality education, clean air, water, and quality healthcare — especially reproductive healthcare.

It’s called their best life. It should not be so hard.

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