Trump Criminal Cases Won’t Sway Their Votes in 2024 Election, Young Voters Say
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For a while the 2024 presidential election felt like a repeat of 2020, but the main characters were older. The past couple of months, though, have proved that this bizarre cycle is anything but the same as it was four years ago.
In May, Donald Trump was convicted in New York State court on 34 counts of falsifying business records for hush-money payments made during his 2016 campaign. His sentencing was supposed to take place on July 11, but has been postponed. He is also facing indictments in three other cases on charges accusing him of mishandling classified information and seeking to interfere in the 2020 election.
Since Trump’s conviction, this unusual presidential race has taken several other twists and turns. For starters, President Joe Biden's poor performance in this cycle's first presidential debate cast doubt on whether he can continue on to be the Democratic Party nominee. As Democrats were hashing out Biden’s viability as a candidate, the Supreme Court ruled, on July 1, that former presidents have broad immunity for official acts, complicating the cases against Trump. As a result, the New York State court agreed to postpone Trump's aforementioned sentencing until September.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the charges, but these cases make him the first current or former president to face a criminal indictment or be convicted of a crime. Still, according to a handful of young voters who spoke with Teen Vogue, for a generation that’s grown up amid one historic event after the last, the former president’s conviction doesn't feel all that monumental.
Many left-leaning young voters feel Trump’s guilty charges should, hypothetically, be a big deal, but they say the charges don't change their mind much about a candidate they already deeply dislike. Though some have reservations about Biden’s age and electoral viability, they still plan to vote for him in November.
Sixteen-year-old Owen Brosanders, a climate organizer from Tucson, tells Teen Vogue, “I’m not sure how much of an impact this will have on the outcome of the presidential election.” Brosanders, who calls himself a “dissatisfied Democrat,” says other recent unprecedented moments, including the Supreme Court overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling and the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, loom larger in his mind than Trump’s conviction. “Those two events were, like, the biggest unprecedented things. I feel like the Trump trial is up there, but not as much.”
Brosanders will be too young to vote in November, but the results of the election could shape his view of the country’s electoral system for years to come. “For me, it'll really come after the election," he says. "Like, seeing if it's possible for someone with a felony conviction to be president, that will really influence it.” He adds, “The distrust of the system is really insane.”
Like Brosanders, Lea Nepomuceno, an 18-year-old from San Diego who is a criminal-justice reform advocate, says Trump’s conviction won’t have a material impact on how she votes in the 2024 election. “Trump's felony doesn't necessarily change anything in the cycle,” she says. “It's not going to change how I plan to vote.”
Nepomuceno does think Trump received a fair trial and should have been convicted, but what struck her most was the celebratory response to the guilty verdict. “I’m definitely not a fan of Trump, but I think no one’s conviction [should] be celebrated, regardless of political affiliation,” she says.
“I saw a lot of my peers celebrating, reposting the news of his conviction…. And even in media headlines, I would see people call him a ‘convicted felon,’ when I believe the proper term for that would be a ‘convicted person,’” Nepomuceno noted, emphasizing the stigma of the term. “The response to Trump’s conviction has resulted in the re-solidified notion that people that are convicted are bad people. I don’t think that’s fair to the millions of Americans who have been convicted, if not wrongfully convicted, to have this… reinforced notion that just because they’re convicted, they are immediately a bad person and not worthy of redemption.”
Nepomuceno says that quick judgment of Trump’s convictions could lead to ramifications for others who do not have his privilege of a high profile and funds for legal representation. Most of the funds have reportedly come from donations to Trump's presidential campaign and other political committees.
In June, youth-voter engagement group Voters of Tomorrow and youth-focused research firm the Generation Lab conducted a survey of young people ages 18-29 in swing states. Seventy-four percent of respondents said a person with a felony conviction should not be allowed to be president. The same poll found that 57% of those surveyed have a worse impression of Trump following his felony conviction, and 25% said they are now more likely to vote for President Biden.
Similarly, the spring Harvard Youth Poll, conducted in March, found that if Trump was found guilty in any of his trials, Biden’s margins increased with young Americans ages 18-29. According to the poll, prior to Trump’s conviction, Biden led the race among all young Americans, but by a smaller margin than he had at the same point in 2020. Among all young Americans, if Trump was hypothetically found guilty, Biden’s lead increased from 8 to 18 points; with young registered voters, it increased from 13 to 21 points; and with likely young voters, it increased from 19 to 28 points.
Voters of Tomorrow press secretary Jack Lobel, 20, from Manhattan, tells Teen Vogue that the delay in Trump’s sentencing “doesn’t change what we already know.” Lobel explains, “A jury of his peers found him guilty of 34 felony counts, just like a jury found him liable for rape. This is not a person who should hold any elected office, especially not the most powerful office in the world.”
Lobel continues, “Young people, as much as any voters, want a president who they can respect and who they know is listening to them. These convictions are an example of Donald Trump only acting on behalf of himself, compared to President Biden, who is empathetic, who follows the rules, and gives young people a seat at the table.”
Despite Biden’s debate performance and the Democratic chaos ever since, Lobel remains loyal to a Biden-Harris ticket, telling Teen Vogue, “The choice between Donald Trump’s extreme ideology and the Biden-Harris ticket’s vision for our future has never been clearer.”
With recognition of the sheer slate of crises that have colored his generation’s vision of politics, Lobel says, as far as he’s concerned, Trump is to blame for much of the “chaos” members of Gen Z have come to expect. “You could say [Trump’s conviction is] one more thing to add to a very chaotic upbringing for us, but it’s also another example of who is really responsible for this chaos: The same man who is responsible for overturning Roe, attacking our environment, and rolling back a lot of the progress we've made on a host of issues.”
Maekyla Massey, an 18-year-old from Long Island who has also done work with Voters of Tomorrow in New York, and is currently very involved with an organization called Minority Millennials, says she was struck by Trump’s criminal charges, in part, because they push back against his privilege and power. “A lot of the time, I think, we perceive these people in power to get away with little-to-no consequences, so I honestly thought it would just be a slap on the wrist type of thing for Donald Trump,” she recalls. “But it actually turned into some pretty serious charges.”
Still, Massey doubts that the charges against Trump will change the way most people feel about him. “If people were set on voting for Trump, they're going to vote for Trump regardless,” she says. “I don’t think a lot of people interpret it as seriously until there’s jail time on the table.”
Massey also says that she’s not surprised by the delay in sentencing: “I’d imagine that something like this would have happened because I feel like processes like this, especially when it is at the forefront of media attention, would be dragged out.”
Massey points to recent polls that show Trump performing better with young voters now than he did in 2020. Though President Biden carried the youth vote by 24 points in 2020, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning at Engagement at Tufts (CIRCLE), a New York Times/Siena College poll from late June and early July showed Biden up by just three points over Trump among likely voters ages 18-29, and Trump is up by eight points among registered voters under 30.
Beyond the election, Massey worries about how the charges and, more broadly, online conversation about Trump’s criminal trials could lead to young people becoming more distrustful of the political system. “It's really hard for young people to navigate political spaces to begin with, and then… there's a lot of misinformation surrounding the charges,” Massey explains. “A lot of young people are losing trust just because of the misinformation that's going around. People see things on TikTok that may not be entirely true.”
Massey believes many people think Trump’s criminal cases were politically motivated, saying it's “very disappointing that we've gotten to the point of thinking that this is a political thing more than a legal thing."
Since Biden’s debate performance, Massey says, she has “a lot of doubts” about the president’s electoral viability. “Don’t get me wrong, I think Biden has been a phenomenal president, but I think Biden is a weak candidate against Donald Trump. There are plenty of other Democrats out there that have stronger chances of beating Trump. Another Trump v. Biden matchup is risky. When democracy and, quite literally, the future of our country is on the line, there should be no risks taken, and running Biden is risky, in my opinion.”
Given the fact that Biden has given no indication that he will leave the race — only doubling down on his commitment to remain the nominee — Massey says she’s sticking by him: “As of Monday, President Biden confirmed that he will be the nominee, and although I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case, it is, and I am dedicated to doing everything in my power to ensure that Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump in November.”
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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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