A new book suggests Generation Z, which has just begun reaching voting age, overwhelmingly backs Democrats, offering President Biden and his party encouragement even as they face difficult midterm elections.
The latest polling puts Biden's approval rating at less than 40 percent and Gallup last year charted a major swing from Republican to Democrat across the nation.
But John Della Volpe, polling director at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, and CEO of SocialSphere, says the latest generation of voters - shaped by the Great Recession, Greta Thunberg, race protests and the rise of Donald Trump - suggests a brighter future.
'Generational replacement will not be kind to Trump’s Republican Party,' he told Axios.
His book, 'Fight: How Gen Z Is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America' was published on Monday, setting out the mindset of some 70 million Americans born from the mid-1990s onwards.
He listed the events and the themes that shaped them through their teenage years, starting with the Occupy Wall Street movement, through the 2018 shooting in Parkland, Florida, and its March for Our Lives protests, and the moment when 17-year-old Darnella Frazier used her phone to video the murder of George Floyd.
'As younger people age, as younger people begin to make voting a more regular habit, there is no question that they will be voting for the values that they've been developing over the last couple of years: concern about the way in which capitalism is practiced, concern about our climate, concern about racial justice,' he told NPR.
'These are the issues that will be driving young people to the polls.
'They've made a greater impact on these issues than many people may already appreciate, and that those Democrats, as well as Republicans who don't take them seriously today, will underestimate them at their peril.'
'Fight: How Gen Z Is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America' was published by St Martin's Press on Monday
It comes after American public opinion tilted hard to the Republicans in the course of last year, according to analysis published by Gallup on Sunday, which showed a nine-point lead for Democrats become a five-point advantage for Republicans.
The eye-catching swing came during a year that began with President Donald Trump being disowned by his own side after the Jan. 6 violence and Joe Biden being sworn into office on the crest of a wave.
But it ended after Trump reemerged as the most powerful figure in his party and President Biden was engulfed by multiple crises.
And it illustrates fears among some Democrats that they face a 'shellacking' in Novembers midterms.
'If that were to hold into the 2022 midterms it would be a seismic victory on election night - this is the biggest advantage for Republicans since the 1994 "Republican Revolution,"' said conservative
