The NPR Politics Podcast - What's Driving People To — Or Away From — The Polls?

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

With 26 weeks to go until Election Day, voters' opinions on the major candidates are forming. We explore the different — and similar — issues motivating people across all ages to go to the polls, like abortion, the economy & Israel's war in Gaza against Hamas.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, political reporter Elena Moore, and national political correspondent Don Gonyea.This podcast was produced by Jeongyoon Han & Kelli Wessinger. It was edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Andalyn in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I'm trying to be chill on the outside while having all the anxiety on the inside as my students take their long-anticipated AP Statistics exam today. This podcast was recorded at 1.06 p.m. on Tuesday, May 7th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll definitely be celebrating all the hard work my students have done this year. I would fail that test so hard. I was trying to figure out what to say because I was so bad at statistics. Also,

chill on the outside, anxious on the inside is going to be on my tombstone. There you go. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Elena Moore. I also cover politics. And I'm Don Gagné, national political correspondent. And today on the show, we're going to look at voters, both young and old, and the issues motivating them to vote in November or maybe just stay home. Don, before we get into it, as one of these in-between voters, I don't think it's fair to consider me young, but I'm not quite old. I think we need a better vocabulary here. I could see I don't want to sound ageist in this podcast. Youth vote sounds so energetic and fun. I don't I'm going to say I think we should call the older vote like the sophisticated vote or something that has as much vibrancy to it.

The knows better than than you do vote. Elena, you've been doing a ton of reporting on where younger voters are right now in this election. And you just took a trip out to the state of Wisconsin, a very critical swing state in November. And you spoke to young voters there. What were sort of the ideas or themes from that trip that have really stood out to you? Well, now I've been to a number of swing states over the last year, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona. And similarly, in Wisconsin, I bopped around to different campuses. I've heard a lot of the same topics. I mean, financial anxiety is a big thing, housing, climate change, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights. But for those more liberal-leaning young voters, the issue around the Middle East, the war between Israel and Hamas remains a topic. And, you know, I heard that

on different campuses in Wisconsin, not just in Madison or Milwaukee. But Elena, to be clear, both candidates have a lot of trouble with youth voters right now. But at least by polling, it would suggest that Joe Biden still has their support by a pretty fundamental margin. Right. I mean, broadly speaking, most of these more Democrat leaning voters are not seeing Trump as an option, in large part because of those issues that we just talked about, abortion, finances, climate. But something I heard from students on different campuses is you can't look at one of these issues in a vacuum because this generation is so fired up about different issues, and one of them is the war in Gaza. But I think some people aren't ready to kind of make that declarative statement of I'm supporting Biden just because it's a little early.

But the dissatisfaction and lack of enthusiasm is there. I think the only other thing I would say is just like the Biden campaign is investing in these campuses now, but they do recognize that it's just not where the students are. Dawn, I think dissatisfaction abounds regardless of age in this election. There's really high disapproval of both Trump and Biden. But the contrast when you're talking about older voters is they might be unhappy, but they are much more likely to turn out to vote. Absolutely. You know, I just got off the phone with a group of AARP pollsters and just looking at the state of Pennsylvania, and we should say the state of Pennsylvania, right? And they note that in 2020, 55% of all votes cast in that state were cast by voters 50 years and up. In 2022, the midterms, 62% of voters fell into that category.

And there's no reason to think 2024 won't produce the same kind of numbers as you would usually see with older voters for an election year. Older voters turn out. Don, I think there is a really interesting dynamic happening among older voters now. And again, precision matters because older voters are not a monolith, right? There is a difference here. Yes. One of the things I think is interesting is AARP largely looks at voters 50 and older. But when you're talking about the segment of the population that's 50 to 64 and the population that's 65 and older, there's a divide there. There is a distinction in how they're viewing this election. Yes. And here is something that has been true forever in American elections. Well, I'll put forever in quotes, right?

But the older you are, the more likely you are to vote for the Republican candidate. It's just the way it's been. Donald Trump, in the last two general elections, carried the 50 years and up vote. If you go back to Barack Obama, he won those big landslide elections, right? Both times he lost among voters 50 years and older. So that should be a problem for Joe Biden come 2024. But this year, we seem to be seeing some shifting, some softening. So in a recent NPR, PBS NewsHour, Marist poll, we have voters over 50 going for Joe Biden just by a little bit. But if you look at voters even older than that, if you go to 65 and up, if you go to the greatest generation, that's those voters who experienced World War II at some point in their lifetime.

That group of seniors is even more likely to support Joe Biden this time. And they actually hand him a pretty sizable margin in a head-to-head against Donald Trump. So these shifts are just fascinating to watch this year. I think it's really interesting. The 65 and older shift to me is interesting, too, because age has been so central to this election and to Joe Biden's reelection and voters questioning his ability to do the job. But yet voters closest to his age seem to still be indicating that he has their support. And that's not insignificant. That's right.

And again, they are voters who will turn out either in person or through an absentee ballot or through mail-in voting. I do want to just say the one interesting thing here is there is this kind of tight rope walk that Democrats do need to play here because yes, these older generations turn out at larger numbers than younger voters, but younger voters over the last several elections have been turning out at higher numbers than previous elections. And when you look at the total electorate of Gen Z and millennials, so people roughly under 43, it's going to keep increasing over the next decade of the potential electorate. And again, it gets back to will they turn out enough? But over the next decade, it's going to surpass 60 percent of the potential voter pool. And that's nothing to sneeze at. All right, let's take a break. And when we get back, we'll talk more on what's on voters' minds.

And we're back. And Elena, I think it's worth focusing for a moment on younger voters and how they're viewing the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, especially because I think there's a contrast here that is worth getting into in that it is clearly dominating the news coverage. The president is weighing in on this. Members of Congress are weighing in on this. They're making trips to college campuses. But when we look at the data, at polling data, younger voters aren't necessarily saying that this is actually one of their top motivating issues. Yeah, it's one of their issues in the same way that climate and abortion are. It's, you know, in the recent Harvard Youth Poll, it was on there, but lower on the list. I mean, and when you look at how folks see Biden's handling of the issue, it's also quite low. So I mean, for a specific faction of this youth vote, it's a really big deal. But to say that it is encompassing the entire voting bloc is definitely not true. came across this like kind of perspective often talking with people, I feel like I'm in a tough place because they don't support Biden on this issue, but do support him on these other issues. And that was one thing I heard when I talked to Miles Medina, who is a 27-year-old sophomore

at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They're transgender and they talked about how abortion rights is a really big thing for them, LGBTQ rights. But the war is also an issue. I'm not happy with Biden's foreign policy. But at the same time, as a transgender person, I don't want my rights taken away. And I know that's something that a lot of people my age are like, what do we do? So I think that question of what do we do is still really big for people. But again, not everyone is asking that. Like, I think in the Harvard Youth Poll, it found that just under 40% of voters under 30 are following the news in Gaza. So I do think this is like a very specific group, but it is a group that's like on everybody's TikTok feed and Instagram feed. And it's pretty hard not to see these things. I mean, if you're a student anywhere, if there's a protest on your campus, you're likely seeing it. So I think it's kind of like important to caveat a lot of this with it's not the only issue, but to say it's not an issue would also be misleading. Sure. And I also think that there's a caveat here with with all polling, right, is that everything's a snapshot in time. Polls can be wrong. And one of the things that I think I've talked about on the pod and I keep in mind going into this election is polls often don't suggest that abortion rights are as big an issue as they

have proven to be when put on the ballot, that they do provoke tons of voter turnout, that people feel really strongly. But when you ask people what their issues are, it doesn't always necessarily crack the top three. So I think it's important to remember that there can be a disconnect between what people like say motivates them and what actually motivates them at the end of the day. Right. Because when we talk about top issues across generations, it is often the economy. And like we will talk about abortion and the war, but it's obviously like a mix of lots of things driving people's vote. And Don, that's certainly true when we look at polling surveys and particularly the data out today from AARP that the economy is still an

election that fundamentally most voters say is about the economy and economic issues in their own lives. In that particular poll, if you kind of cluster a group of economic issues, things like broadly the economy, but inflation and social security, and even factor in things like the cost of being a home caregiver. That is by far the most important thing for older voters in this poll. Things like climate change, like 6% mentioned that. Things like foreign policy, which would include the war in Gaza as just a subset of that, that too is way down around 6%. Again, it's not that they're not paying attention to those things, but they are not the priorities. Because that's a question I have for both of you. This is the challenge for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, is the question of persuasion. It's going to be a tight election. There's not a ton

of movement in the margins. But this survey and other surveys suggest that there is movement possible among both young and old voters. And one thing we saw from the AARP poll is that there is movement. And they say that what we're looking at in this snapshot of a poll today is far from cast in stone. The other thing that the pollsters at AARP said is that people, enthusiastic or not, are unusually locked in at this point, certainly the 50-plus voters. Yeah, and I think on the youth vote, it's important to remember that four years ago around this time, Joe Biden, you could argue, also had a young person problem. And young voters, voters under 30, ended up turning out for Biden by huge numbers because it gets back to the fall and there's going to be a ton of talking about the election. I think questions remain on how enthusiastic people will be. Will there still be the same amount of young people who get on buses and go down to swing counties from their college?

I don't know because of that enthusiasm gap. But to say that this is settled, I think, is far from true. And as I always say, an enthusiastic vote counts just as much as an unenthusiastic one. All right. Well, that is it for us today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Elena Moore. I also cover politics. And I'm Don Gagne, national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.