SUMMARY
Four years ago Joe Biden won the presidency with a 25-point lead over Donald Trump among voters aged 18-29. Today his lead has shrunk in that age group to a third, according to polls. The situation in Gaza has a lot to do with that, but is that going to change the direction of their vote? It seems unlikely. And in any case, Biden’s real problem is the independent voters who make up 25% of the electorate and represent the margin of victory in every state.
Carlos Hernández-Echevarría / Instituto Franklin-UAH
Biden’s big problem is not the college students who call him “Genocidal Joe” when they protest against the war in Gaza. Those students are not so many either and many of them, even if they don’t know it now, will end up voting for him in November anyway. Biden’s problem, and it is a huge political problem, is right now watching these protests on television or on social media. Let me explain:
1- The specific weight of university protests is limited.
In the upcoming elections, 18-24 year olds will represent perhaps 10% of the electorate and, to be generous, that means that perhaps 5% of voters will be university students. Within that 5% there will be many different opinions and the political influence of the protests is also limited by their geographic distribution: of the 25 largest university protests on Gaza, according to Associated Press, only two are in the swing states, the states where presidential elections are normally decided.
The political weight of such protests has never been in their numbers, but in their influence. Despite analogies with the great revolts of the Vietnam era, those in Gaza today are far less massive, less violent and less influential, at least for the moment. In 1968 the peace movement succeeded in preventing the president from running for re-election and almost prevented the Democratic Party convention in Chicago from nominating a candidate to succeed him. Today we are not seeing anything even close to that.
2- How many votes does this cost Biden?
Four years ago Joe Biden won the presidency by beating Trump by 25 points among voters aged 18-29, and today, polls say, his lead among that age group is perhaps three times smaller. Today, polls say, his lead among that age group is perhaps three times smaller. How much does Gaza have to do with that? It’s complicated. Young Americans are twice as sympathetic to the Palestinian cause as the general population and three times as sympathetic as those over 65, but is that going to change the direction of their vote?
All the protesters know who Joe Biden’s rival is in November and that Donald Trump is not going to be the one to reduce support for Israel. It’s another thing if some conclude that it’s not worth bothering to vote, but polls also tell us that young voters care about Gaza, but much less than other issues such as the economy, the environment or abortion rights. This is not to say that Biden doesn’t have a problem with young voters – he does, but not necessarily because of Gaza.
Biden was never an exciting icon-candidate for young people in the style of Obama, he was the alternative to Trump and still is at 81 years of age. In a poll of swing states, 18% of young voters are considering voting for conspiratorial candidate Robert Kennedy, most likely as punishment for the disenchantment caused by the new Biden-Trump showdown, but who these young people will vote for (and if they will vote at all) in November is an unknown. They are not many, but in a close election decided in a handful of states, they may hold the key as much as any other group.
A good example of this is Michigan, a state where Biden must win if he is to be re-elected and where today his four-point lead over Trump in 2020 has turned into a four-point disadvantage. There, Robert Kennedy currently has 19% intention to be voted by those under 30 and, if he did not run, they would vote decisively for Trump by 27 points.
3- Biden’s real issue is far from the campuses.
Foreign policy issues have traditionally been of modest importance in US presidential elections, and Gaza is not yet a domestic issue in the way that Vietnam or the invasion of Iraq might have been. It is important to stress the “still”: there is a reason FOX News and the conservative media spend so much time talking about these protests. Disorder, lawlessness, clashes with police – that sort of thing has won the Republican party many elections.
“Law and order”, since the Nixon campaign in 1968, has been at the heart of Republican messaging. Appeals to a “silent majority” that doesn’t demonstrate, doesn’t shout, doesn’t complain, doesn’t want a fuss… have proved very effective, also for Trump, along with the ensuing “heavy-handed” proposals to restore order. If the protests become more violent and turn into major riots with a lot of police intervention (it doesn’t seem so), the big danger for Biden will not be the protesters but the independent voters watching from home.
These voters, who declare themselves neither Republican nor Democrat, were the ones who won the last election for Biden. They are not 5% of the electorate like university students, but 25%, and represent the margin of victory in all states. In 2020 they voted for the current president with a 13-point lead and today they are split between Trump and Biden, although 60% of those living in swing states say they would vote for the “independent” Robert Kennedy.
These voters tend to start thinking about the election shortly before they are held, perhaps after the summer, and they also tend to pay more attention to the economy when deciding how to vote. Yet throughout history they have been sensitive to the “order versus protest” argument that countless Republican leaders have exploited in elections over the past half-century. Biden is probably thinking of them when he says that “there is a right to protest, but not to create chaos“, striking a difficult balance.
Carlos Hernández-Echevarría
Journalist
Lecturer on the Master’s degree in North American Studies at the Instituto Franklin-UAH and associate lecturer at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He analyses current affairs and American history in various media and specialised magazines. He holds a degree in journalism from the Universidad San Pablo CEU and a master’s degree in Elections and Campaign Management from Fordham University in New York, where he was a Fulbright scholar. He has worked for 15 years in television and is now the Public Policy coordinator of the fact-checker Maldita.es.
