… Gen Z’s concerns seem to go beyond those gripping everyone in recent months. A generation turning to the left is colliding with a political system ever more structurally biased to the right. And a generation that wants the government to play an active role in improving people’s lives is confronting the fact that Washington has become less capable of getting anything done. Maybe young voters’ mood will improve in the coming weeks. But do Democrats have any hope of delivering what they want in the long term?

Young voters themselves do not seem convinced. Biden’s approval rating has dipped three times more among members of Gen Z than among Boomers. A recent poll from The New York Times and Siena College found that just one in 100 young people strongly approved of the president’s job performance, and 94 in 100 young Democrats believed someone else should run in 2024. (Among voters over age 64, by contrast, 22 percent strongly approved of Biden’s performance, and 42 percent of Democrats in this age group wanted the party to nominate a different candidate.) Moreover, in a Harvard poll conducted this spring, one in three young people said that “political involvement rarely has tangible results,” and two in five believed their vote “doesn’t make a difference.”

Over the past few weeks, I spoke with a number of political analysts and pollsters, as well as politically engaged young activists, to try to understand why the younger voters—and young progressives in particular—have been feeling so down. CONTINUED

Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic

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