Biden’s student-loan forgiveness is at risk. It may have helped stop a ‘red tsunami’ as Gen Z flocked to the polls to save their relief.
- The “red tsunami” Republicans were hoping for didn’t happen at the midterm elections.
- Advocates and lawmakers are crediting youth voter turnout that helped deliver wins for Democrats.
If President Joe Biden didn’t enact broad student-loan forgiveness, Republicans may have gotten the electoral wins they were hoping for.
Gen Z may have helped.
Leading up to the midterm elections, the polls were predicting massive GOP victories across the board, allowing them to regain significant control over the House and Senate. But as the results continue to trickle in, it’s become clear that the red wave turned into a ripple, with control of both chambers of Congress too close to call the day after the election.
While it’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly may have caused this shift, opinions of young voters should be taken into consideration. According to the Edison Research National Election Pool exit poll, 63% of voters aged 18-29 supported Democrats, and 89% of Black youth and 68% of Latino youth voted for a Democratic House candidate. With the oldest Gen Zers turning 25 this year, this group includes the youngest Millennials and those Zoomers of voting age.
“The role of young people in this election cannot be understated. Turnout delivered on many of these races,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.
“By 2024, Millennials & Gen Z voters will outnumber voters who are Baby Boomers and older, 45/25,” she added. “We are beginning to see the political impacts of that generational shift.”
Major issues like reproductive rights, climate change, and student-loan forgiveness likely helped with that turnout. John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, wrote on Twitter that “if not for voters under 30 … tonight WOULD have been a Red Wave,” and he referred to Biden’s policies on the climate and student debt that he argued helped Democrats win votes.
Student-loan forgiveness is currently paused due to a ruling from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, in response to a lawsuit filed by six Republican-led states seeking to halt the debt relief. But Biden’s August announcement of up to $20,000 in relief for federal borrowers making under $125,000 a year was a long-awaited policy that the president pledged to fulfill on the campaign trail, and one that consistently polled well among young voters. A poll from Morning Consult last year, for example, found millennial voters are most likely to support student-debt cancellation among all Americans.
Biden frequently touted the relief leading up to the midterms, and he slammed the Republicans trying to block the debt cancellation from hitting the accounts of the 26 million borrowers’ accounts who have already applied. But White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said on Twitter that even amid those challenges, Biden delivering on progressive priorities helped motivate young voters now, and could set precedent for the future.
“The @POTUS kept his promises to younger Americans (with action on climate change, student loans, marijuana reform, etc.), and they responded with energy and enthusiasm,” Klain wrote on Twitter.
“The youth agenda is taking center stage in the Democratic party”
Support for student-loan forgiveness is higher among young voters than the general public. A Wall Street Journal poll last week found that while 48% of the public favored Biden’s debt relief plan, 59% of voters aged 18-34 backed the plan, and CNN exit polls found roughly half of voters supported the plan, as well.
For months leading up to the midterms, some Democratic lawmakers emphasized the importance of the youth vote. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, said in January — half a year before Biden even announced broad debt cancellation — that “canceling student-loan debt for more than 40 million Americans would persuade a lot of young people that this president is in the fight for them.”
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America — a progressive group that mobilizes young voters — told Insider that along with social issues like abortion, “there were a lot of young people that also turned out really to protect gains on economic justice, issues like student debt relief, and trying to continue to expand and raise the minimum wage and protect the rights of unions.”
“The youth agenda is taking center stage in the Democratic Party,” she said. “The red wave or the red tsunami that was reported that was going to come didn’t come through and that’s because young people turned out.”
