Younger Americans turning away from Biden as concerns over 2022 mount, poll suggests

President Joe Biden is facing underwater approval ratings with younger voters as his part heads into the 2022 midterm campaign season, a new poll found this week.

In an Economist/YouGov poll taken between 12-14 December, just 27 per cent of respondents under the age of 30 said that they either strongly or somewhat supported the job Mr Biden was doing in office.

That was compared to an even 50 per cent in the same category who strongly or somewhat opposed his performance. In January, Mr Biden’s support among this category was at about 77 per cent.

The president did better among all other age groups in the poll, but notably did not crack 50 per cent among any age-based demographic. Among younger voters, though, the drop in support was the most notable, as his support was 50 points higher among 18-29 year-olds in the Economist/YouGov poll in January.

His support among voters of colour is slipping as well. Six in 10 Black respondents said they approved of the job Mr Biden was doing, and less than half of Hispanic voters said the same.

The president and his vice president, Kamala Harris, have largely brushed off concerns about their approval ratings and blamed journalists for not covering the administration’s successes with more frequency.

The party’s signature piece of social policy legislation named after Mr Biden’s “Build Back Better” slogan is currently stalled in the Senate over objections from a member of the president’s own party, and now looks to potentially be delayed into the new year. A roughly $1 trillion bipartisan “hard” infrastructure bill was signed into law by the president several weeks ago, and the party also passed Covid-19 relief legislation several months ago.

The Economist/YouGov poll surveyed 1,500 Americans with a margin of error of 3 percentage points, however the margin of error increases for smaller samples of the total population.