The youth vote has become a coveted voting bloc in the 2024 election, with the Trump campaign making inroads and leaning on the cultural stars of the manosphere to connect with young Americans. Two years later, polls show that the dynamic has slowed or reversed.
Driving the news: President Trump is cited as the biggest threat facing America today, by young college graduates ages 18 to 29 in a new Generation Lab poll for Axios. It comes first (33%), ahead of cost of living and income inequality (25%), political extremism (16%), public spending (5%) and climate change, AI and immigration and border concerns (4% each).
- 48% of young, college-educated Democrats, 22% of independents and 6% of Republicans called Trump the biggest threat.
- Half of those surveyed said they were proud to be American; about one in five people don’t feel proud and one in three are unsure.
The big picture: A key question going into these midterm elections is whether young Americans will take their political disillusionment and economic anxiety to the polls.
- Nonpartisan voter registration platform Vote.org said this week that young voters appear to be driving a “massive wave of Democratic registrations” ahead of next week’s election, with the largest surge in registration seen in Texas.
- A recently released Harvard poll of young people aged 18 to 29 found that half of young Democrats say they will definitely vote in November, compared to 34% of young Republicans – a gap that has widened to 16 points in 2026 from five points in 2022. Among young people who say they will definitely vote, 63% describe their vote in Congress as opposition to President Trump and his policies.
- But those polled in the Generation Lab survey were divided on the importance of their vote: 32% say a lot, 31% say a little, and 28% say a little.
What they say: Young Americans have “never experienced a political system that has actually worked, much less one that has worked for us,” Sam Hiner, executive director of the Young People’s Alliance, told Axios.
- Trump presented himself as the man capable of shaking up this system. But Hiner says that “we very quickly saw… the young people who voted for Trump in 2024 became alienated” by issues like the war in Iran, the handling of the Epstein cases and affordability. “It’s a difficult time for a young Republican.”
Zoom out: A New York Times/University of Siena poll of likely midterm voters, released last week, found that seven in ten young voters (ages 18 to 29) identify as or lean Democratic — a 15-point change from before the 2024 election.
Yes, but: Younger generations do not always vote for a single party and report feeling that modern politics does not work for them.
- “The reality is that young people are very turned off by both parties,” says Rachel Janfaza, a Gen Z researcher and founder of The Up and Up. “They are frustrated with the status quo and are looking for change, and so I think this massive and rapid change is an indication of exactly that.”
- In a recent focus group she conducted in conjunction with the Kettering Foundation, Janfaza observed Gen Z’s deep concern about their financial future: “Looking at their parents who had a home, a family, when they were their age, and young people… are using ‘buy now, pay later’ to buy groceries.
Methodology: The Generation Lab study was conducted October 26-27, 2026, using a nationally representative sample of 919 students or recent alumni, ages 18-29. The margin of error is +/- 3.23 percentage points.
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