Young Voters Are Turning Away From Trump. Here’s Why

One year into President Donald Trump’s second term, a key demographic that helped him win the White House is abandoning him in droves.

Trump’s support among young people has cratered over the last year, according to several recent polls—the drop among young men has been particularly stark. 

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In the 2024 presidential election, Trump received 39% of the vote share among 18-29-year-olds, according to Pew Research Center data. He did particularly well among young men, winning an estimated 54% of the demographic, according to data firm Catalyst’s autopsy of the 2024 election.

Read More: How Americans Are Feeling About Trump as His First Year in Office Comes to a Close

But an Economist/YouGov poll conducted February 6-9 showed that Trump’s Gen Z approval dropped to its lowest level in his second term so far, with approval among voters aged 18 to 29 at 25 percent, and 67 percent disapproving. That is down from 50% approval and 42% disapproval in Feb. 2025.  

A WSJ poll conducted in late January found that 58% of voters under 30 now disapprove of his job performance as president.

CBS News data also show that Trump’s job approval among Gen Z, defined as those born between 1997 and 2012, has fallen from +10 percentage points in February 2025 to -32 points in mid-January.

The drop is noticeable among young men as well, a group the Trump campaign courted heavily in its 2024 campaign, a strategy that led him to appear on podcasts popular with the demographic, such as those hosted by Joe Rogan and Theo Von.

A poll last week from the nonpartisan think tank Third Way shows that Trump’s job approval has declined among young men aged 18-29, with 32% approving and 66% disapproving of his performance in office. Trump won among young men in 2024 after Biden captured them in 2020.

The reasons for the drop are varied—he has lost ground on issues ranging from the economy and immigration to foreign policy and healthcare. 

But the numbers may spell trouble for the Republican Party in the midterms this year, and even in the long term, perhaps dispelling the notion that a greater cultural shift had taken place in 2024.

“Presidential approval is one of the biggest determinants of vote choice in midterm elections.” Melissa Michelson, political scientist and professor at Menlo College, tells TIME. “Unless he experiences a strong reversal of public opinion before November, there is little chance of Republicans holding onto control of the House of Representatives.”

She continues, “Young men were a big part of Trump’s victory in 2024, but they are not going to be there for him in 2026.”

Here are the reasons why Trump is losing the support of young people:

Healthcare

Healthcare was identified as the most important issue in both the ThirdWay poll and the WSJ poll. 

Some 66% of young men surveyed by Third Way were concerned about cuts to healthcare funding. And among 18-to-29 year-olds polled by the WSJ, Trump’s approval on healthcare was -32. 

This comes after approximately $1 trillion was cut from federal spending in healthcare over the next 10 years in President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” nearly $800 billion of that from Medicaid alone. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the cuts would leave some 10 million more people uninsured.  

Medicaid and healthcare were at the center of a government shutdown in November —the largest in history— when subsidies under the Affordable Care Act were not extended. Out-of-pocket insurance costs are estimated to double in 2026 as a result.

Foreign Policy

Young poll respondents also cited Trump’s handling of foreign policy in his first year, from his threats to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, to his capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Polls indicate that Gen Z increasingly views it as unnecessary for the U.S. to assume a leading role in foreign affairs. A December 2025 Pew Research Center shows that only 39% of Americans under 30 believe it is extremely or very important for the United States to take an active role in world affairs— a five-point drop from respondents ages 30-49, a 20-point drop from those ages 50-64, and a 34-point drop from those aged 65 and older.

A January CBS/YouGov poll found that 61% percent of Americans under 30 said the Trump administration is focusing “too much” on “international matters and events overseas.” 

Trump’s approval on foreign policy was -31 in the WSJ poll. 

This comes especially after Trump and his top administration officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance, campaigned in 2024 on an “America First” foreign policy agenda.

The economy

Affordability was a large part of Trump’s 2024 campaign, but his approval on that issue—and the economy as a whole— has taken a huge dive among young people. 

Some 58% of young men in the ThirdWay poll said that Trump has negatively impacted their finances, while just 23% say that he has had a positive impact.

When broken up by race, 71% of young Black men, 59% of young white men, and 48% of young Latino men say that Trump has negatively impacted their finances.

The economy, tariffs and affordability all showed up as top concerns in the WSJ poll.  A net 29% of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 disapproved of Trump’s policies on tariffs, 25%  disapproved of his performance on the economy and 11% disapproved of his performance on inflation.

In a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted Feb. 3-5, 58% of respondents under 30 felt that the economy was “getting worse,” with 53% saying they perceived that prices of goods and services were  “going up.” Some 71% of the under-30 respondents in their mid-January poll disapproved of Trump’s handling of inflation and 76% felt that the Trump Administration was doing “not enough” to lower prices.

Immigration

The mid-January CBS/YouGov poll found that 60% of respondents under 30 felt that the Trump Administration was doing “too much” to deport undocumented immigrants in the U.S., as a February PBS/NPR/Marist poll found that just 18% of those under 30 approve of Trump’s immigration crackdown, while 69% disapprove. Approximately 75% of Gen Z respondents reported that the actions of immigration enforcement agents made the U.S. somewhat or much less safe, a higher percentage than any other age group in the survey.

The ThirdWay poll corroborates this concern by young men specifically, as 60% of their respondents cited immigration as a top issue, specifically Trump’s “expansion of immigration raids to target anyone who looks or sounds foreign.”

The news about declining support for Trump among young people comes as polls earlier this year found support for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is surging among Republicans.

A late January YouGov poll showed that 19 percent of Republicans and 48 percent of American adults across the political spectrum voiced support for abolishing ICE.