Some Republicans are concerned they could be erasing their gains with young voters, a blue-leaning demographic that President Trump made significant inroads with in 2024.
Recent polling has shown young voters overwhelmingly disapproving of Trump and the GOP amid increasing anxiety over the state of the economy, while young people played a big role in helping Democrats win in 2025’s off-year races.
And though young Americans are persistently pessimistic about both major parties, strategists believe anger over Trump’s policies and affordability issues could help draw them further into the Democratic fold.
“If you’re 29 and you’re paying out the nose for health care, and you can’t own your own home and groceries are killing you, you don’t really care about the conversations about tariffs. That’s not where you’re living. You’re living at, ‘Hey, I need the price of eggs to drop,’” said Brett Loyd, a longtime Republican pollster who now works with an independent firm.
Young voters have long favored Democrats, but Trump cut significantly into that advantage in 2024, particularly among young men, rattling a party that has long relied on the bloc.
Though voters aged 29 and younger sided with former President Biden by 25 points against Trump in 2020, they went for former Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump by just 4 points in 2024, according to data from Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). Young women preferred Harris by 17 points, but young men preferred Trump by 14 points.
But some recent polling has suggested the tide could be turning for Democrats. A Harvard Youth Poll released last month found Trump had a notably low 29 percent approval rating among Americans between 18 and 29 years old, compared to the national average that’s now around 43 percent.
In that same poll, Democrats in Congress had a very slight approval edge over their Republican counterparts among young voters, 27 percent to 26 percent, and a significant advantage when it came to which party young people preferred to control Congress: 46 percent to 29 percent.
A Yale Youth Poll conducted by Verasight, which was also released last month, found Trump with a 34 percent approval rating among voters 22 and younger, and a 32 percent approval from those aged 23 to 29. Voters between the ages of 18 and 34 also preferred the Democratic candidate over the Republican on a generic congressional ballot by between 15 points and 20 points, compared to a 2-point edge among surveyed voters of all ages.
Republican strategist Ron Bonjean said the figures “should be very concerning to Republicans,” though he argued they’re not entirely surprising for the president’s party in a midterm year.
Adam Pennings, executive director of Run GenZ, a group founded by Trump appointee Joe Mitchell that supports young Republicans running for office, echoed that statement.
“It’s really the curse of the majority, right?” Pennings said, adding that it’s “the curse of being in charge.”
Still, he suggested that younger Republicans might be souring on the president in part because he’s strayed from his 2024 campaign promises, adding that while some of those voters viewed him as a better candidate than Harris, “that doesn’t mean that they loved him overall.”
Pennings pointed to a moment during Trump’s press conference after the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, when a reporter asked the president why running a country in South America was “America First.”
“He had a good answer, but I think a lot of young people are wondering the same things,” Pennings said. “Why are we not focusing on the people in Pennsylvania? Why are we not focusing on the people in Ohio or California or wherever, right? Why are we even looking at Venezuela?”
Pennings notes that one of the issues that young voters cared about — the release of the files connected to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — has been addressed, which he suggested could help Trump regain favor with the group. However, the president notably only signaled his support of the Justice Department’s release of the Epstein files after much pressure and initial resistance.
But it’s the economy, a top issue across all age brackets, that appears to be driving youth frustration with the party in power.
Loyd, the GOP pollster, drew parallels between the latest generic ballot figures and those seen in the lead-up to the 2018 midterms, which saw Democrats’ “blue wave.”
“This is sizing up to look a lot like 2018, which were a brutal midterms for the Republicans in Donald Trump’s first term, with one major exception: the economy was good in 2018. The economy is not good now,” said GOP strategist Mike Madrid, co-founder of the anti-Trump The Lincoln Project.
Democrats’ 2025 winning streak in off-year and special elections is another problematic sign for Republicans.
The 28 percent turnout among voters 29 and younger in New York City’s mayoral race last year was much higher than in the past two decades, according to CIRCLE, and there was a notable uptick in young voters in New Jersey’s and Virginia’s gubernatorial races. In each of those, which notably put affordability at the fore, around 7 in 10 young people voted for the Democratic contender.
Kaivan Shroff, a Democratic strategist and veteran of the Gen-Z group Dream for America, predicts that the same “short-term feelings about the economy” that drove some young people to Trump could reverse those gains in 2026.
“At the same time, is that a long-term strategy for 2028 and beyond? No,” Shroff said. “Trump failing is not enough.”
And young voters souring on Trump doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll run straight to Democrats; polling continues to show young people aren’t tied to party identity and distrust both major parties, said Rachel Janfaza, who leads youth listening sessions through her research firm The Up and Up.
“In 2026, young voters aren’t looking for candidates who check boxes in a purity test or who stick to one party talking points. They’re really, actually looking for politicians who are just true to themselves and are willing to take a strong, specific stance on the issues that are affecting their daily lives,” Janfaza said.
To that end, Trump and congressional Republicans “need to speak to young people to talk about what they’re doing to secure their futures economically, with AI, and work on rebuilding the trust that’s eroded over the past years among young voters,” Bonjean said.
“Young voters moved to Trump and the Republicans ostensibly for economic reasons,” Republican strategist Barrett Marson said.
“Well, now that Republicans control Washington, they have to deliver on that affordability message,” he said. “Do people believe that Republicans and Trump have addressed affordability in a way that impacts them? That’ll be the question.”