Happy Friday! Today, we’re focusing on young voters and other demographic groups that are generally important to Democratic victories in presidential elections, but who are more likely to support other candidates or spend this year’s election than in previous years. There is a possibility that you will be absent a lot. I asked his colleague Shane Goldmacher to get things started. — Jess Bidgood
Like many fellow Democrats, Ben Tulchin, a former pollster for Sen. Bernie Sanders, is concerned about the possibility of President Biden running against Donald Trump this fall. And like many Democrats, he is nervous about Biden’s current level of support in some core Democratic constituencies.
But Mr. Tulchin is warning Democrats who will listen to certain things they may not have thought of. That’s the possibility that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will end up siphoning off two traditionally Democratic voting groups this fall: Latinos and young voters.
He was so worried that he paid for his own votes in two key battleground states, Arizona and Pennsylvania, showing that Mr. Kennedy was drawing some voters away from Mr. Biden. He recently presented these findings to a consortium of Democratic groups and super PACs.
“I’m sounding the alarm,” Tulchin said in an interview.
Mr. Tulchin’s concerns are basically this. The Latinos and young voters who flocked to independent Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primary were not that interested in Biden to begin with. Indeed, they strongly supported Biden in the general election. But, as Tulchin says, “they weren’t enthusiastic.”
He sees Kennedy, a former Democrat now running as an independent, offering voters a viable alternative that won’t jumpstart Trump.
Tulchin said 2020 was a two-dimensional race. “Now we’re playing multidimensional chess, and it’s becoming even more complex,” he added.
Messages that appeal to key voters
Kennedy, who has the strongest approval ratings of any third-party candidate in decades, cast his vote this week in the key battleground state of Michigan. Fully aware of the growing threat, President Biden appeared in Philadelphia on Thursday with many members of the Kennedy family, including RFK Jr.’s sister, to gain their support. The Democratic National Committee also mobilized a team specifically to fight Kennedy and other third-party candidates.
But Mr. Tulchin, a veteran pollster from San Francisco who has worked for a wide range of Democrats, including New York Mayor Eric Adams, believes the party is trying to discredit Mr. Kennedy’s ties to the anti-vaccination movement. We are concerned that the focus is too narrow on the use of he. He has listened to what President Kennedy actually said during the campaign, which he said was loaded with anti-establishment, anti-corporate economic populism.
In other words, Tulchin is hearing a variation on the Sanders message that was so popular with young Democrats and Latinos.
“Young voters and Latinos respond very well to tough populist messages on the economy, and that’s not Biden’s message,” Tulchin said. “They’re dissatisfied with the political and economic status quo. And I think there’s potential in that mindset to support third-party candidates.”
It’s important to note that Kennedy is not yet on most state ballots. However, when he is included in polls, he often registers in the low single digits. The New York Times most recently included Mr. Kennedy in its survey of battleground states last fall. That poll actually had him tied with Biden and Trump among voters under 45.
Several national polls appear to confirm Mr. Tulchin’s concerns, as they show that Mr. Biden loses support among young and Latino voters when Mr. Kennedy is included as an option. A Quinnipiac national poll in late March showed Trump’s lead over Biden among Hispanic voters rose from 3 points to 7 points after Kennedy was included in the survey. Similarly, Mr. Biden’s lead among young voters was 20 points in a head-to-head race against Mr. Trump, but only 9 points when Mr. Kennedy and other third-party candidates are included.
Democratic Party’s response
Team Biden takes seriously the president’s relative weakness among Latino voters and younger voters. There were early television ads aimed at appealing to them. In March, Mr. Biden traveled to Arizona with his campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, and announced the “Latino Biden-Harris” coalition.
“We need you,” Biden told the audience at the event. “I really need you.”
Some Democrats have also undermined Kennedy’s appeal among young voters, emphasizing his more hawkish rhetoric on Israel at a time when most young voters oppose the war in Gaza. I’m aiming for that.
Sure enough, the hosts of the popular liberal show Pod Save America discussed the topic just this week.
President Trump’s allies are also concerned. A prominent pro-Trump super PAC has just launched a website that desecrates Kennedy’s famous initials and emphasizes the former Democrat’s more liberal stance in an effort to stop conservative voters from drifting toward him. is.
But many strategists believe Mr. Kennedy, the scion of the nation’s most famous Democratic dynasty, has a better chance of pulling votes away from Mr. Biden than Mr. Trump at the start of the campaign.
“There’s a permission structure created by name and tradition,” said Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, a Latino polling organization. “The question is whether it will hold up under any scrutiny.”
Matt Barrett, a Democratic pollster working with the Biden campaign, said Kennedy’s name did not come up among Latinos, a demographic Barrett focuses on, in other surveys. . He also said the Biden campaign will need to sell to younger voters and Latinos, but predicted it would ultimately be successful.
“RFK is not a real candidate,” Barreto said, explaining Kennedy’s early claims. “He’s an idea.”
He added: “If the Biden campaign goes to great lengths to contrast Biden and Trump, many progressives and young voters will find it impossible to vote for Trump or RFK.”
But Tulchin says the idea that Kennedy will disappear on its own as the choice between Biden and Trump becomes clearer to the public is frustratingly misguided.
“It’s magical thinking,” he said.
citations and notes
Mother and son split over voting
It’s not just Latino voters that Democrats are worried about. They also worry that enthusiasm for Biden is waning among Black voters, especially younger voters.
My colleague Maya King found a striking example of this in her story about the emergence of a generational divide among Black voters. Older black voters who remember the civil rights movement and their parents’ stories about it appear to be more motivated to vote than younger generations, Maya wrote.
Tali Turner, 52, told Maya about her son Bryce Ballard, 34.
“I’ll let him vote. He’ll vote. I’m not kidding about him voting. I’ll pick him up to vote.”
But Ballard told Maya that he has no intention of voting in November at this time.
“I don’t feel a connection to either candidate.”
Read Maya’s story here.
Run-up
Another challenge for Democrats: Introducing the youngest voters to Trump
It is true that President Biden’s approval rating among young Americans is declining. But my colleague Asted Herndon says his problems are worse among the youngest voters.
This week, Asted spoke on the excellent political podcast The Run-Up with Cristina Zintzún Ramirez, executive director of the Democratic group NextGen America. In a new poll, the group found that 18- to 24-year-olds are about equally likely to view Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump as a threat to their future. Below are excerpts from their interviews, edited for clarity.
ah: What do you think caused the lower support for Biden among 18- to 24-year-olds, especially compared to other age groups?
CR: If you’re 18, you were 10 when Donald Trump was elected. Perhaps you want to hear the sounds of babies crying at the border being torn from their mothers, or the sight of Heather Heyer being run over by white supremacists in Charlottesville. I guess I had great parents who didn’t want me to.
ah: interesting. So what moved this group the most was not just saying, “Here’s the good thing Joe Biden has done,” but more than that, “Here’s the bad thing Donald Trump has done?” That’s what it meant.
CR: yes. We can say to our youngest voters: But little did we know that he was the president who nominated a Supreme Court justice to overturn Roe. ” When you talk about his attacks on abortion, civil rights, and human rights, that’s a huge motivator for this generation.
Listen to the episode here.
