Young Trump voters are jumping ship—and fast.
A new poll from the Wall Street Journal reveals that the wave of youthful support that swept Donald Trump back into the White House has completely lost its mojo, with several voters under 30 now publicly declaring buyer’s remorse.
“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, who has since resigned as vice president of her campus Turning Point USA chapter.
THE DETAILS: The numbers are brutal. According to the WSJ poll from January 16, approval among 18-29 year-olds has cratered to just 32.6 percent—down from 44.4 percent in March of last year. That’s an 11.8 percentage point drop in less than a year. Trump won 47 percent of the under-30 vote in 2024, a genuine coup for a Republican, but those gains have been completely frittered away.
The Harvard Youth Poll from late December painted an even grimmer picture: just 32 percent of young men and a dismal 26 percent of young women approve of the president.
BUT BUT BUT: The frustration isn’t about some abstract ideological shift—it’s about broken promises. Young voters expected Trump to focus on their economic struggles, not endless foreign policy adventures.
“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, echoed the sentiment: “A lot of people expected him to address economic issues first.”
OF COURSE: Trump is apparently aware of the problem. Israel’s brutal war in Gaza has been particularly toxic among young voters—so much so that Trump reportedly 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 with the conversation.
The White House, predictably, is spinning. Spokesperson Davis Ingle insisted that “President Trump was overwhelmingly elected by nearly 80 million Americans to deliver on his popular and commonsense agenda” and that he “remains the most dominant figure in American politics.”
WHY IT MATTERS: Trump’s 2024 victory among young voters—particularly young men—was no accident. It was the product of savvy campaigning, including his appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. But that coalition is fracturing.
Rogan himself has denounced the shooting death of 37-year-old mom-of-three Renee Good in Minnesota. Even longtime MAGA loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene has now acrimoniously split with the president.
The young men who were supposed to be Trump’s new base are watching their grocery bills and rent while the administration focuses on overseas conflicts. Turns out “America First” was just another campaign slogan—and a whole lot of young voters are figuring that out the hard way.