Young Trump voters have buyer’s remorse, saying he hasn’t focused on the promises that got him to the White House, a new report has claimed.
Several people under 30 who voted for the Republican candidate in 2024 have stated on the record that they’re frustrated by what appears to be a prioritization of foreign policy over “America First” governance.
It comes after a Jan. 16 poll from The Wall Street Journal revealed that 18-29-year-old voters had already dramatically cooled on Trump compared with less than a year before.
Only 32.6 percent approved of him in January, compared to 44.4 percent in March last year. He secured 47 percent of the under-30 vote during the 2024 election—a coup for a Republican—but now those gains have been frittered away.
“This is not the party I once signed up for and registered to be in,” said 21-year-old Saint Mary’s College junior Elysia Morales.
She has since stepped down as vice president of the college’s Turning Point USA chapter, following the shooting death of 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti in Minnesota in January.
TPUSA was founded by late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed last year, and was instrumental in Trump’s re-election.
Trump’s big gain among young people in 2024 was predominantly driven by support from men, whose vote he won outright that year.
Joe Biden had won it in 2020, but four years later, Republicans wrangled the group across party lines through savvy campaigning, such as Trump appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. Now that support is on shakier ground, with Rogan having denounced the shooting of 37-year-old mom-of-three Renee Good in Minnesota in January.
In the late December edition of the Harvard Youth Poll, just 32 percent of young men approved of Trump, while 26 percent of young women did.
But it’s people’s perception of the economy that’s driving the biggest loss of support, precipitated by near-endless diplomacy and foreign policy headlines.
“I love the idea of America First,” 22-year-old Illinois food-service worker Jaden Blomberg told the Journal. “I don’t think that this particular moment in history, while we have internal problems, we should be fighting on the other side of the world.”
Maellie Lewna, a 21-year-old College Republicans recruitment director at Xavier University in Ohio, had a similar sentiment.
“A lot of people expected him to address economic issues first,” she told the newspaper.
Trump is aware of it, too. Among the foreign policies to have gone down badly, support for Israel’s brutal war in Gaza has been particularly tough to swallow among young voters.
In a bid to stymie the frustration, Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “People are getting sick of turning on the TV and seeing you bombing everything. The young people don’t like it,” according to a person familiar, via the Journal.
Meanwhile, Trump’s inability to convince voters of his “America First” sensibilities has led to high-profile dissent, including from longtime stooge Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has now acrimoniously split with the president.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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