Author: Fallon Roth

Kelly Harrington is frustrated.

The 29-year-old Conshohocken resident recently got laid off from a local, financially struggling real estate company and is now trying to find work in a grueling job market for young workers where many of her applications are getting intercepted by AI bots, instead of a person.

On top of that, she is watching the cost of gas and groceries climb, concerned about reproductive rights after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, and is deeply worried about the environmental impacts from a proposed data center in nearby Plymouth Township.

Harrington joins 75% of likely voters ages 18 to 29 in disapproving of President Donald Trump’s job performance, according to an Inquirer/New York Times/Siena University poll published Tuesday.

That is a higher percentage than any in other age group in the poll, which found 58% of all Pennsylvania likely voters disapprove of the president.

Though 80% of young voters said they are satisfied with their own life, they overwhelmingly gave Trump low marks on his handling of the economy and other major issues in the United States.

Young people are overwhelmed by rising costs in what they see as an unstable economic and volatile international landscape with ramifications that they will one day have to shoulder.

“It feels like things are going downhill in a way that we don’t know how to recover, and our generation is going to be responsible for picking up the pieces environmentally,” said Harrington, a Democrat. “Also, politically, there are many things that have been done that are going to be hard to take back or that we have to figure out how to undo in the future.”

The poll, which surveyed likely voters in Pennsylvania between Aug. 17 and 21, underscores how deeply unpopular Trump is among the generation that came of age during his foray into politics and could foreshadow where the state’s politics are headed beyond November’s high-stakes midterm races.

“Young people are feeling as though they simply don’t have the same level of opportunity as do older people,” said Don Levy, director of the Siena Research Institute. “They are dissatisfied,” he added, and contending with housing expenses, the prices of goods and services, and how much it costs to get married.

‘The cost of continuing to exist’

Sophie Showers, 19, wants kids, a stable job as a psychologist, and to one day be married.

But now that vision is getting hazier as costs rise, including at the grocery store and at the gas pump, which she needs for her 45-minute commute to school — what the Mechanicsburg resident and first-time voter refers to as “the cost of continuing to exist.”

Trump, according to the poll, is most underwater with young voters on the cost of living: Only 9% approve and 90% disapprove of his handling of the issue.

That disapproval includes a quarter of voters under 30 who cast ballots for Trump in 2024, including a young voter from the Philadelphia area who asked not to be identified due to his role in his local Republican Party.

He supported Trump in 2024, but he has become disappointed with what he says is Trump’s ignorance of the country’s biggest problems, namely inflation.

“He wants to lower taxes. He wants to cut regulation. I agree with all those things,” he said. “But actually making major changes to people’s pricing, I don’t think he’s taking it that seriously.”

On the economy, 19% of young people approve of Trump’s handling and 81% disapprove, according to the poll.

“The current state of our country is that young people feel as though they have less opportunity economically than their parents or grandparents,” Levy said. “That’s a clear statement on dissatisfaction with the economy.”

As they try to jump-start their early adulthood, young people are dealing with rising expenses, including unusually high gas prices and years of steadily increasing grocery store costs. Trump’s tariffs also raised prices for both businesses and consumers.

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“If the cost of living keeps increasing, whether it be due to gas prices … or tariffs increasing the costs of groceries, I don’t want to be in a world where I have to worry about those kinds of things for the family that I want to have or will have, and I personally don’t really see things getting better,” said Showers, an independent voter.

Miles Balfour, a graduate student pursuing a degree in human interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, is feeling similarly pessimistic.

“When it comes to the financial and economic goals that I have for myself — wanting to own a home, wanting to be able to help provide financially for my family — I don’t know, honestly. I wish there was a better sense of confidence or assurance that these things are much more likely to actually happen,” Balfour, 25, said.

According to a survey earlier this year from CIRCLE, a Tufts University program that studies youth civic engagement, many young people ages 18 to 29 are barely making ends meet, and nearly 60% said they struggle to meet their basic financial needs.

“Young people’s personal situations are also really coloring their view of politics and of what’s happening in the country,” said Alberto Medina, CIRCLE’s communications manager.

Ben Hummer, 28, of Pittsburgh, said though he is new to his career in recruiting, raises have slowed down while expenses like rent have gone up. His auto insurance for his Hyundai skyrocketed to roughly $3,000 a year, and his favorite sneakers — for a race he will be running later this year — have jumped from $120 to about $170.

“My ability to afford my lifestyle comfortably has become more challenged,” Hummer, a Democrat, said.

Young voters grapple with international conflicts

Beyond struggles at home, young voters are also wrestling with questions about the U.S. role in overseas conflicts.

After the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack against Israel by Hamas, the country launched a military campaign against the insurgent group in Gaza. And with the death toll of Palestinians climbing to more than 70,000 over the last three years, the debate over U.S. support for Israel has become a defining issue for many young people in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

As encampments and protests in support of Palestinians roiled university campuses ahead of the 2024 election, the issue hung over former President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign before his withdrawal and may have contributed to Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss.

Trump repeatedly vowed during his 2024 campaign to end the war. But fighting has continued, and now only 16% of likely young voters in Pennsylvania approve of Trump’s handling of the conflict, the poll found.

Hummer, the 28-year-old from Pittsburgh, disapproves of the president’s approach and said the U.S. “needs to balance its approach” in the Middle East.

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“It doesn’t necessarily have to be pro-Palestinian by any means, but the United States has allies in the region outside of Israel that are being negatively impacted by the conflict, and we often just throw them under the bus,” Hummer said.

Many young people have coupled their anger about the economy with Trump’s decision to join Israel in striking Iranian nuclear facilities and military sites. The Iranian regime retaliated by blocking a key water channel where oil tankers flow, spiking the price of gas throughout the spring.

Among 18- to 29-year-old Pennsylvania voters, only 17% approve of Trump’s handling of the war in Iran, while 82% disapprove (it is also his least popular issue among all likely voters in the state). The war — which the president originally promised would go on for only a few weeks — has now lasted for six months.

“I’m concerned about the United States’ ability to extract itself from the war in Iran without taking some kind of loss — whether it’s loss of influence, loss of life, or loss of financial resources,” and the prospect gets worse the longer the U.S. remains involved, Hummer said.

Young voters are also more critical of Pennsylvania leaders’ positions on Israel than are respondents overall.

Nearly half, 47%, of respondents said Pennsylvania’s third Jewish governor, Josh Shapiro, has been just “about right on support of Israel,” with 14% saying he has been too supportive, despite his vocal opposition to the country’s leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But among young voters, 40% said he was too supportive.

And more than half, 51%, of young voters said Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, a frequent defender of Israel who has said he would leave the Democratic Party if anti-Israel sentiment grew too strong, is too supportive of Israel — compared with 30% overall.

‘Willing and ready to vote in 2026’

Young voters are now figuring out what to do next.

Darlene Jimenez, 19, of Philadelphia, said she is grappling with what she can feasibly do as a young person who cares deeply about many issues, including immigration (on which Trump has a 25% approval rating among young voters) and climate change.

“There’s so many times where I find myself thinking like, ‘What am I to do?’” said Jimenez, a Democrat and college student. “Like, I’m 19 and I have so many opinions, and it’s like, what am I supposed to do to actually make a change?”

Medina, communications manager for CIRCLE, said that while there is a sense of hopelessness among young people, “many of them are paying attention, and they say that they’re willing and ready to vote in 2026.”

“Often, precisely because they don’t like the way things are going, and they would like things to change, and they see themselves as having a role in bringing about that change,” Medina said the organization has found in its research.

In Pennsylvania, the youth vote has the potential to make a “decisive impact” on the four key competitive congressional district races this fall — in Bucks County, the Lehigh Valley, the Scranton area, and the Harrisburg region — according to CIRCLE’s 2026 Youth Electoral Significance Index.

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But at the same time, young people are still trying to find their political home and historically have been less likely to vote than other age groups, including in 2024, when there was a 54% turnout rate among Pennsylvanians ages 18 to 24 compared with 70% for the overall electorate, according to census data.

Others are a little more sure of where they stand. For instance, young women are the demographic most disapproving of Trump among likely voters in the Inquirer/New York Times/Siena poll. Fourteen percent of young women approve of his job performance, and 83% disapprove.

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While a gender gap still exists among young voters, young men — who helped catapult Trump to the White House in 2024 — now disapprove of the president by a nearly 2-1 ratio: 33% approve of his job performance, compared with 64% who disapprove.

Will, a Democrat from Bucks County who works in academia, crossed the aisle to vote for Trump in 2024 because he — “a loyal Joe Biden guy” — vehemently disagreed with how Harris was nominated without a primary after Biden’s withdrawal and also believes Democrats have focused too much on identity politics.

The 27-year-old, who asked to be identified only by his first name because of concerns about workplace retaliation, has mixed feelings about Trump’s handling of the issues and called the Iran war “ridiculous.” But he does not fully regret his vote, citing Trump’s handling of Israel as one reason.

“My impression is that the Democrats have been moving further left to kind of compensate for the fact that MAGA and the tea party moved the Republicans further right, so it kind of leaves people in the middle stranded. … I would prefer the Democrats kind of bring things back to the center,” said Will, who supports Shapiro for governor and would back him for president in 2028.

And Luke Averill, 19, a registered Republican from Delaware County who voted for Harris in 2024, said he thinks he can make the most impact on the direction of the country by voting for moderate candidates in Pennsylvania’s GOP primaries, but he does not see himself as a “diehard for one party in particular.”

But for many young voters, the elected officials they are gravitating toward are indicative of what is most important to them.

Several young respondents to the poll said they find New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s style of politics and focus on affordability to be refreshing.

“He’s the inspiration for myself and many people in my generation and all around the country,” Balfour, the 25-year-old at Carnegie Mellon, said. Mamdani brings “a sense of hope and optimism” and the ability to see government “make our lives much more meaningful.”

And as for Harrington, the 29-year-old from Conshohocken, she said though she feels “frustrated and sad about the state of the world,” she believes it is important to take those emotions to the ballot box.

“Politics is in every aspect of life,” Harrington said. “It affects you directly in almost every way, and if you get involved, you can make real change.”