Youth are disillusioned with the biggest institutions in American politics and culture.
When asked how often they trusted major political, economic, and mainstream media entities to do the right thing in the Spring 2024 Harvard Public Opinion Project Youth Poll, young Americans in overwhelming majority responded “Some of the time” or “Never.” The latest set of low points in ever-declining trust in major institutions, HPOP’s findings reflect a young populace — many of whom are voting in a presidential election for the first time — that is more jaded than ever about the state of American leadership.
Trust in American Presidency Declines by 18% in Last Three Years
Since 2021, Biden has nearly halved trust in the presidency. In Spring 2021, the first HPOP poll conducted during his time in office, 38% of young Americans trusted the president to do the right thing all or most of the time. Today, just 20% of young Americans continue to hold that belief, a low-water mark for the institution even compared to Trump’s numbers.
While trust in the government has historically been split along partisan lines according to the party in control of the White House, the bad news for Biden is that Republicans are far from alone in believing him untrustworthy. Only 29% of young Democrats trust the President to do the right thing, alongside 14% of Republicans. By way of comparison, in the spring of 2020, a whopping 72% of young Republicans trusted President Trump.
Headed for a rematch, Biden will need to dispel the disillusionment within his own party to be re-elected in November.
Trust in U.S. Military Down 10% in Last Year
President Biden is far from alone in his slipping trustworthiness. The military, a stalwart of recent American public opinion, has also taken a hit over the last year. While young people still perceive the military to be more trustworthy than other institutions, just 36% of young Americans trust the military, down from last year’s 46%.
The dip in military trust is remarkably consistent along ideological lines: 10 percentage points (32% to 22%) among self-identified liberals, 11 percentage points among conservatives (59% to 48%), and eight percentage points among moderates (50% to 42%).
The ongoing conflict in Gaza likely accounts for the last year’s dramatic shifts in military trust, which remained essentially unchanged in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine (49% in Spring 2021 to 46% in 2022).
According to a Chicago Council on Global Affairs and Ipsos survey, public support for sending U.S. military aid to Ukraine was high at the outset of the war — nearly 80% in March 2022 with little partisan divide — but has since declined, mostly among Republicans and Independents. Support for U.S. military aid to Israel is much lower: Just 36% of Americans support U.S. military aid to Israel, according to a March 2024 Pew Research Center poll.
Both Biden and Trump will have to contend with this increasing skepticism within the younger sects of their parties. However, results from HPOP’s Fall 2023 poll, fielded between Oct. 23 and Nov. 6, 2023, indicate that Biden will have a slightly tougher time rebuking criticism from progressives and conservatives alike for his administration’s response to the Israel-Hamas war. When asked which candidate they trusted more to handle the Israel-Hamas war, 30% of young Americans selected former President Trump over 25% for President Biden, though a stunning 44% indicated confidence in neither.
Progressives have put pressure on Biden to call for a permanent ceasefire through protests at campaign events and in the ballot box, where “uncommitted” protest ballots accounted for 13% of Michigan’s Democratic primary votes and 19% of the share in Minnesota. Similar campaigns have picked up popularity in states whose primaries remain. Biden’s challenge has always been to reconcile the increasingly divergent wings of his party, but his administration’s reluctance to intervene in the mounting humanitarian crisis on the Gaza Strip has only brought this undertaking into sharper relief.
Youth Support for SCOTUS Down by 9% in Last Year
Young Americans’ trust in the U.S. Supreme Court stands at just 24%, down nine points from 33% last spring and 14 points from 37% in the spring of 2022. This precipitous decline in trust in the American judiciary follows several high-profile decisions in the last two years: the overturning of constitutionally-enshrined abortion protections under Roe v. Wade in 2022 and the Students for Fair Admissions victory over Harvard and the University of North Carolina to eliminate race-conscious college admissions in 2023. It may also reflect blowback from some justices’ previously undisclosed relationships with billionaire donors, which raised red flags in 2023 about ethics and impartiality in the country’s highest court.
Unsurprisingly, the Court’s recent conservative decisions have been poorly received by Democrats, who are overwhelmingly responsible for the decline. Even Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic appointment in February 2022 could not bolster young Democrats’ belief in the Court, which stood at 51% in spring 2021 and dropped to 36% in an HPOP poll conducted a few months after her confirmation. Today, only 17% of young Democrats have a favorable view of the Supreme Court’s trustworthiness — down 19 percentage points in two years. For Republicans, the past few years have netted the Court more trust: 40% in 2022, which jumped to 48% in 2023 before declining to 43% this year — though notably still slightly higher than the numbers in 2022.
Biden’s administration has borne witness to the bulk of the Supreme Court’s rightward shift. Trump may have put three conservative justices on the bench, but it has been during Biden’s term that those justices have exerted their influence on two major lightning rods of American cultural discourse: reproductive rights and race in higher education. As November approaches, Biden's re-election prospects may depend on successfully pinning these recent setbacks on Trump, of whom voters seem to have developed a rosier image.
The Upshot for Biden
Biden was sent to the White House in 2020 by a Democratic coalition that was already reluctant to rally behind him — in particular, progressives who ultimately landed in Biden’s camp thanks to support from figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt. Frustration about Biden’s record over the last three years may keep his 2020 supporters from voting to re-elect him.
The pessimism among young people in HPOP’s recent poll suggests an even steeper uphill battle for Biden to win over a young populace wearied by a pandemic, two major overseas conflicts, dramatic changes in the legal landscape, and innumerable culture wars. Young people’s trust, it seems, is largely impervious to the Biden campaign’s refrains of post-pandemic economic rehabilitation and protection against Trump’s threat to reproductive healthcare.
Three years out from Biden’s inaugural promises of unity, it seems that partisan fractures are far from healed — and that his own party is less than convinced by his performance.
