Tracking how young people view Trump

One of the things I’m curious about in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk is whether the political views of young people will shift. This was Kirk’s wheelhouse, we are told: engaging young people in politics to Republicans’ and Trump’s benefit.

I am personally skeptical about claims that Kirk and his organization, Turning Point USA, had a major influence on the rightward shift of young people in recent years and I am very skeptical of the (now frequent) claims that he and his organization had a significant effect on the 2024 election outcome. But if he was an outsized force among young people, we might expect to see some movement in views of Trump, on whose behalf Kirk’s efforts were primarily deployed.

So I figured I’d measure the current baseline. In YouGov’s regular polling on Trump’s approval rating, there was a jump in the views of Americans under the age of 30 this week. But that number is often volatile, given that it is a measurement of a relatively small subset of the population.

While Americans aged 18 to 29 were about as likely to approve of Trump’s performance as president back in March, that approval has since collapsed. The recent uptick still has Trump’s approval among young people below where it was in early August.

When Trump won in November, his favorability rating surged among Americans under the age of 45. But here, too, that positive sentiment collapsed. Now, only about a third of young people view Trump favorably (looking at a three-week average, mostly to smooth out some of the aforementioned volatility).

On both approval and favorability, Trump’s seen the biggest declines among young Americans since mid-February.

So that’s where we are, in polling conducted in the aftermath of Kirk’s death. We will see where we stand in a month or two.

Photo: The president dances, in his way. (White House/Flickr)