The politics of young people is the politics of instability
Plus: gerrymandering, 2026, news diets, and more on affordability. Your weekly political data roundup for December 14, 2025
Dear readers,
This is my weekly roundup of new political data published over the last week. In this edition, I found several new polls of young people worth commenting on. And I was sent plenty of other data on gerrymandering, the 2026 U.S. Senate primaries, affordability, and news diets.
Before diving in, I want to flag two special offers here at Strength In Numbers for the holiday season. First, gift subscriptions. If you’re in the market for a last-minute gift for a friend or loved one, I humbly suggest giving them the gift of independent, data-driven political analysis. With the midterms coming up, this is the perfect gift to improve the numeracy of the news-obsessed person in your life:
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Elliott
1. The politics of young people is the politics of instability
Two new surveys of young people caught my eye over the last week. First is this “GenForward” survey (covered on NPR), which finds “Young voters could be key to midterm success, but they’ve soured on both parties.” And second, the new Harvard Institute of Politics Youth Poll, which finds “Young Americans feel the country is off course and their futures are unstable” and “economic pressure is the defining force in young people’s lives.”
I had a few reactions to this. First, yikes — young people are obviously having a rough go of things right now. They cite economic immobility as a chief concern. And with real wages declining and the price of housing reaching all-time highs (here’s Scott Alexander and Kyla Scanlon on the roots of the “vibecession”), you can’t blame them. As a fellow young person living in a city where things are easy too expensive, I know where the respondents in these polls are coming from. Regardless of what the statistics say, outcomes feel incredibly bleak for the next generation of Americans.
This will have political ramifications. The vibes are, to be blunt, shit. Harvard’s IOP finds just 13% of young adults say the country is headed in the right direction, and 43% report they’re “struggling” or just “getting by” financially. In the GenForward data, nearly 9 in 10 say they’re concerned about food prices and health care costs, and a meaningful share report acute housing anxiety.
The average young person is extremely economically and politically anxious.
And this anxiety impacts voting behavior. Young people are already less attached to political parties. Anxiety makes them downright electorally unstable.
While young people are more progressive than the average American, they are also more likely to switch parties. Recently, they have been more elastic based on whichever party they see as more responsible for the affordability crisis. In 2024, we saw young people get fed up with Democratic leadership and move significantly to the right — only to rebound less than a year later. And we can expect more instability going forward; in the NPR write-up of GenForward’s poll, roughly 60% of young people hold unfavorable views of both major political parties, and more than 80% agree that they “do such a poor job representing the American people that voters need more political party choices.”
And Harvard finds young adults offer overwhelmingly negative descriptions of both Democrats and Republicans:
To be clear, young people do still lean toward Democrats. In the Harvard IOP data, Trump’s job approval rating is 29% among young adults — lower than his 40% overall approval rating — and Democrats are ahead of Republicans on the 2026 generic congressional ballot (46% prefer Democratic control vs. 29% Republican). GenForward similarly gives Democrats an early leg up: When respondents were asked who they would choose on a generic congressional ballot between Democrats and Republicans, Democrats led by 15 points.
However, roughly 3 in 10 young voters rejected both major-party options in rhetoric generic ballot, and a plurality of young people identify as politically independent. This is what soft partisanship looks like: directionally Democratic, but with many voters unaffiliated.
The future for young people could look like 2018, or like 2024. I could see Republicans making serious inroads with young voters if they manage to actually solve the cost-of-living issue. Of course, with Trump visibly increasing costs with tariffs and the GOP in Congress refusing to deal on Obamacare premiums, it doesn’t look like they’ll pull that off.
And that leaves young people drifting in the wind. The risk, if this continues, is that they become permanently alienated from either party. Harvard IOP finds that most young people, regardless of political party, say American democracy is either “in trouble” or only “somewhat functioning.”
The IOP says in their report:
young Americans see democratic strain as part of the broader instability defining their lives — and even the value they place on democracy is beginning to soften.
If 2024 taught us anything about young people, it’s that no party should take their votes for granted. Maybe a new one will come along and save them.
2. What you missed at Strength In Numbers last week
Subscribers to this newsletter received three original, data-driven articles over the last week. That’s more bespoke, high-quality political journalism than you get almost anywhere on Substack today:
First up, a new piece for all readers on how “affordability voters” feel about Trump and the 2026 midterms, using our Strength In Numbers/Verasight polling:
Affordability voters favor Democrats over Republicans for 2026 House midterms
President Trump spent Tuesday night, Dec. 9, in a Pennsylvania casino ballroom launching what the White House billed as an “affordability tour.” But instead of a president finally leveling with voters about prices and wages, the audience got something closer to a greatest hits album. Trump’s speech was filled with digressions about immigrants from “shit…
Second, an essay for premium subscribers about how cable news broke U.S. politics, using data from a new academic study on media habits and TV outlet coverage:
How cable news fueled the culture war and broke U.S. politics
Over the last decade, politicians have spent most of their ad budgets talking about issues we can broadly call “economic” or “affordability” issues: jobs, prices, health care, taxes, and social programs. Most of the bills the government passes are about these programs, and most of the ways in which everyday people interact with their government are also “economic” (we pay taxes and/or receive benefits). There’s a reason “It’s the economy, stupid” is a saying and “It’s the cancel culture, stupid” is not. If you ask voters today what their number one issue is,
And finally, my regular Sunday piece covering the attitudes of new Republican voters in comparison to core MAGA:
If you’re a frequent reader of Strength In Numbers, I’m confident you will get a lot of value out of a paid subscription. You don’t just get a lot of extra, high-quality content, including premium data features and trackers, but also direct access to me and a private community of data nerds working in polling and U.S. politics. I know there are a lot of writers asking for your money these days, but think about this: Who else is offering you 4+ original, high-quality, data-driven analyses of U.S. politics and elections in a single week?
A yearly subscription really helps the business grow:
If a paid subscription isn’t right for you, the best thing you can do to help this business succeed is share this newsletter with a friend or on social media:
3. Even more numbers!
Here are some other political data stories I came across last week that I thought were interesting or notable:
Polling on gerrymandering. Sam Hayes finds that the public wants sensible, competitive maps, and disapproves of partisan gerrymandering.
Close primary contests are emerging on both sides of the aisle for the 2026 U.S. Senate election in Texas.
Pew finds young people are following the news much less than older Americans, and they’re getting most of their news from social media websites.
A new survey from Navigator Research finds a lot of pessimism on the cost of living, with a huge increase in the share of adults saying health care is unaffordable for them.
I thought this was interesting. I have often heard that rates of suicide and self harm increase during the holidays, but the Anneberg Public Policy Center at UPenn says no, that’s wrong.
AP NORC: “Trump’s handling of the economy is at its lowest point in AP-NORC polling”
A poll from the Searchlight Institute finds many Americans think politicians are corrupt, and most think government serves the interests of the wealthy and businesses instead of the average person.
Pew: More Americans say government has a responsibility to ensure health care for the average person
Trump’s birthright citizenship “executive order” is incredibly unpopular, supported by just 23% of adults and opposed by 67%.
The Yale Youth Poll finds “young voters turn on Trump” (This is notable because Yale made a lot of noise earlier in 2024 for finding young voters ages 18-21 would vote disproportionately for Republicans in the 2026 generic ballot. I was skeptical of that finding.)
Charles Franklin looks at midterm seat losses from 1862 to 2022.
Gallup says: “Independents Drive Approval of ACA to New High of 57%”
I am thinking about this for a piece, but one theory of the long-term impact of Trump’s presidency is that the GOP blunders on health care and SNAP in 2025 will haunt them for a while.
And a new autopsy of Democrats’ losses in 2024 suggests ideological moderation would not have been enough to win the White House or Senate. Dems were weak in communication, issue selection, and from “nature of the times” issues outside their control, the authors say. I like the section of this report on how moving right on several issues legitimized Republicans’ talking points and counterintuitively ended up hurting Harris — something similar to what’ going on with Labour in the UK right now (I plan to write about this soon). The reports also identifies inequality as a strong issue for Democrats, which I agree with.
Got any political data stories of your own to share? Drop them in the comments below!
4. Polling update
The Strength In Numbers polling averages have moved to a new webpage at fiftyplusone.news, a website purely for poll-tracking that I’ve set up with my friends. Some averages, like my average of Trump’s approval rating on individual issues, remain on the data portal but will be moved to the new site soon.
Trump’s net job approval is -15.8, a slight rebound since last week.
The generic ballot is D+3.7, a decline of a little over half a point since last week.
That’s it for your major political data stories this week.
Got more for next week? Email your links or add to the comments below!
“Pew finds young people are following the news much less than older Americans, and they’re getting most of their news from social media websites.”
Any chance that this is a factor in their alienation?
"The future for young people could look like 2018, or like 2024. I could see Republicans making serious inroads with young voters if they manage to actually solve the cost-of-living issue."
I am still disappointed in the lack of political literacy among young voters.
If they had voted in Kamala Harris, they would have been voting for student loan relief. They would have been voting for improving infrastructure. They would have been voting for lower healthcare and medication costs. They would have been voting for NOT giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts to billionaires. They would have been voting for renewable energy and addressing climate change. They would have been voting for campaign finance reform. They would have been voting to continue the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Instead, they voted for a fascist felon with a long history of lies and bigotry and corruption, because he pinky-promised them he would lower the cost of eggs.
If you do nothing else, read Heather Cox Richardson's "Democracy Awakening", or Michael Lewis's "The Fifth Risk" or Anne Applebaum's "Autocracy, Inc.," or "The Haves and Have-Yachts" by Evan Osnos or "The Jungle Grows Back" by Robert Kagan or "Leadership in Tough Times" by Doris Kearns Goodwin or "The Soul of America" by John Meacham.
It really helps to know the history of the Democratic and Republican Parties in America.
There are definitive patterns in terms of which one helps average Americans and which one wants only rich white men to run the show, and how income inequality (plus Citizens United) is destroying our democracy.
Honestly.