A significant majority of young people in the United States are concerned about the country’s moral direction under US President Donald Trump, according to new survey.
Among young Democrats, 66 percent said they were concerned about the moral direction of the country, up from 42 percent in 2015, according to the poll from Harvard’s Institute of Politics provided exclusively to Time magazine.
Among young Republicans, 64 percent expressed concern about America’s direction, down nine points from 2015, the survey found.
The study found that this concern correlated with increased anxiety and some of that anxiety is leading to more political participation.
Young voters are more enthusiastic about the 2020 presidential election than they were about the 2016 election. The poll found that 43 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds said they were likely to vote in their state’s primary, compared to 36 percent who said so in the spring of 2015.
“Almost all of the additional enthusiasm relative to four years ago is coming from young Democrats,” says John Della Volpe, polling director at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.
“Not only are younger people more engaged, but they’re becoming more engaged and more progressive at the same time,” he said.
The Harvard survey also found that young voters have grown suspicious of the so-called Baby Boomer generation, Americans born from 1946 to 1964.
Only 16 percent said they thought Boomer elected officials (defined here as between the ages of 55 and 73) cared about people like them. Roughly 40 percent said they didn’t think Boomer voters or officials had young voters’ best interests at heart.
A poll released in February by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 70 percent of Americans says the United States is headed the wrong way and 52 percent are pessimistic about the future of the country.
The remarkable level of national gloom is even beginning to extend to how Americans view the economy, once a relative bright spot in America’s mood. A slight majority of Americans still has positive feelings about the national economy, but many expect it to decline in the next year.
About half of Americans, 53 percent, describe the economy as generally good. But looking ahead, they’re more likely to expect the economy to get worse than better, 44 percent to 27 percent.