US Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump.
Brendan Mcdermid | Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
Young Americans don’t appear to hold Vice President Kamala Harris responsible for what many of them believe is a deteriorating U.S. economy under the Biden-Harris administration, according to a new survey from CNBC and Generation Lab.
The latest Youth and Money Quarterly survey, conducted after Biden dropped out of the race in July, found that 69% of Americans aged 18 to 34 believe the economy is getting worse under President Joe Biden.
But they also believe the candidate best able to improve the economy is Democrat Harris, not Republican and former President Donald Trump.
Forty-one percent of poll respondents said Harris was the best candidate for the economy, while 40% chose Trump, and 19% said the economy would do better under someone else, like third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The results represent a seven-point shift in Democrats’ favor on the economy since CNBC asked the same question in its Youth & Money Survey in May. At that time, just 34% of respondents believed Biden, then the Democratic presumptive nominee, was the best candidate to boost the economy, with 40% choosing Trump and 25% choosing Kennedy.
The shift in support for Harris is even broader among respondents overall. If the presidential election were held today, the latest poll shows Harris leading Trump by 12 points among young Americans, 46% to 34%, while 21% said they would vote for Kennedy or another candidate.
Three months ago, the same survey found Trump and Biden nearly tied, with 36% backing Biden and 35% backing Trump, and 29% planning to vote for Kennedy.
Harris’s surge is all the more remarkable today given how important the economy is to the voting choices of young Americans.
According to new survey data from CNBC, “the economy and cost of living” was mentioned more than any other issue when respondents were asked what would influence their voting decisions, with 66% of respondents naming it among their top three issues. Coming in second at 34% was “access to abortion and reproductive rights,” followed by “gun violence/control” at 26%.
But the results also contain warning signs for Harris and the Democratic Party.
To win the White House, Harris will likely need to do even better among young people in November than her current 12-point lead in the CNBC and Generation Lab survey.
‘Bidenomics’ may not be an obstacle for Harris
With less than 90 days until Election Day on November 5, these new results could have a significant impact on a presidential election that has already been upended by Biden’s decision to withdraw.
While pollsters race to collect data on whether Harris’s candidacy will change the race, one of the biggest unanswered questions for both parties is whether Americans will transfer their well-documented frustration with Biden, after years of inflation and high interest rates, directly to Harris.
These findings suggest that the political appeal of “Bidenomics” has so far failed to resonate with Harris—at least among young people.
For example, in 2020, Biden win votes from 18 to 29 years old by a 24 percent margin, with 59% of the vote to Trump’s 35%.
While young people have long made up a key voting bloc for Democratic candidates, this year, depending on which state Kennedy appears on the ballot, the anti-vaccine independent could still win enough votes from Harris to close her overall gap.
Voter turnout is also a potential trouble spot for Democrats. According to the census, the 18- to 34-year-old age group makes up about a quarter of the total US population, or about 76 million people. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In the most recent presidential election in 2020, 57% of this age group went to vote.
In this survey, 77% of respondents said they would definitely or probably vote. But in previous elections, the number of people who said they planned to vote was often much higher than the number who actually voted.
The economy remains an unknown.
Finally, as is often the case in an election, the economy could work against or for Harris, depending on which way it goes.
For example, this poll was conducted from July 22 to July 29, before the latest jobs report showed a decline, raising fresh fears of a recession.
This photo was also taken before the market sell-off on August 5, partly due to fears stemming from a dismal jobs report.
Meanwhile, most polls that sample all adults, not just young people, still show Trump holding the edge when it comes to which candidate voters trust more to improve the economy.
Any bad economic news between now and November could cause voters to blame Harris — who has yet to fully articulate an economic agenda that is distinct from Biden’s — and return to Trump’s supposedly safe, familiar economic agenda.
The survey interviewed 1,043 adults between the ages of 18 and 34, with a margin of error of 3.0 percent.
