Young voters helped Biden to victory. They may abandon him this year

Elise Joshi stumped for Joe Biden as a college freshman, motivated in no small part by her sense of urgency about climate change. The environmental policy student campaigned before the 2020 election as part of TikTok for Biden, in hopes of persuading other young people to show up to the polls.

The work undertaken by Joshi and her peers paid off for Democrats – youth voter turnout surged in 2020, and has been widely credited as playing a key role in propelling Biden to victory.

But as the Israeli bombing of Gaza has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians to date, Joshi is feeling disillusioned with the president she once “happily” voted for. She’s not alone. With US military support for Israel holding steady, Joshi says that the White House’s current handling of the situation in Palestine is alienating young people – the very demographic Biden will need to win re-election in 2024.

“My generation is appalled. There’s a lot of people who are not willing to put their votes towards this administration as a result of their actions in Gaza,” she said.

And if Democrats think their climate track record will be enough to redeem them, she said, then they’re miscalculating how young people view the current administration’s actions on climate in the first place.

Biden has sometimes been described as the “climate president” for signing into law the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the largest investment in clean energy in American history. But many young people in Joshi’s cohort are more concerned with the oil and gas provisions within the IRA, as well as Biden’s unwillingness to declare a climate emergency. Joshi also says her peers are frequently disappointed over the Willow Project, an oil-drilling project approved by the Biden