and many more. >> you wrapped it up lovely. thanks to everybody. this has been a fabulous morning. it has been a wonderful conversation. thank you to you, chairman powell, for spending the time, giving of yourself, but most importantly, for what you do for the nation and the world in public service. it takes a lot out of the person, their family. we really owe you a debt of gratitude. i think people recognize after this conversation why you are the right person in that role for these times, so thank you so much. [applause] >> coming up, we'll take you to the white house where national security strategic communicator john kirby and press secretary

karine jean-pierre will be briefing reporters. live coverage when that gets under way. >> we're joined by daniel cox with the american intervise institute where he's director of survey center on american life. welcome to the program. guest: thanks for having me.

host: can you tell us about the survey center on american life? guest: sure, we are about three years old and focus on topics of research that are relevant to the ways americans are living. we focus polls on friendship and date, changes to american family life and religious practice, views about science and schools and other institutions. it runs the gamut of the things that people spend lots of time thinking about and experiences they're having. host: can you talk about your most recent opinion piece and what you discovered about young voters and year they are right now in thoefrpl 2024 election. guest: sure. there's been a lot written on the subject recently. a lot of really smart folks are trying to figure out what's going on. we've seen a number of polls recently with very puzzling rules that biden and trump appear to be tied among younger voters and that's people between

the ages of 18 and 29. this is a very historically democratic group, by about 25 percentage points in the 2020 election. this represents a massive swing in less than two years if it actually worked out. so a lot of us are skraoufrpg heads, trying to figure out exactly what's going on. host: let's look at some of the numbers. there was a "new york times"-sienna college poll, six battleground states where they found joe biden has a one-point-lead over trump among the 18-29-year-old voters you were just discussing. what is your reaction to that? what's accounted for the spweupbg you just mentioned we're seeing? guest: the big question is whether there's actually a swing or not. there's some arguments that it's possible that some of these preelection polls that are nearly a year out from the election are capturing some of the most engaged young voters

and those folks may not be representative of the entire youth vote. so that's, i think, something we need to be, you know, concerned about, looking at tpwal lineup polls and our polls show that young people especially are really tuned out ott this point. it's also possible that this is reflecting current preferences but those references are really weakly held. the campaign hasn't begun. we don't even have two candidates though we have a fairly good idea of who they're going to be. i think that's something that we should keep in mind as well. host: that same "new york times"-sienna college poll also found that robert f. kennedy jr. was leading both biden and trump among young voters. how do you explain that? guest: third party candidate doswell in pre-election polling and flame out in election polling. people don't like wasting their vote and that's what happened

when you vote third party in the u.s. i think it does reflect something real among young voters that they have liberal proclivities on a variety of issues they lean left, they don't feel particularly etphapl new mexico mored of the republican or democrat party. a pew poll found that roughly four in 10 young people had an untpa*efrable opinion of both political parties, higher than any other age group. host: we want to hear your thoughts on young votes for the this upcoming election or the upcoming election in yen. any questions you may have for daniel. our number for republicans is 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents on 202-748-8002. i want to actually pull up a quote here from pew research which is also looking at younger voters which says after decades of constituting the majority of

voters, baby boomers and members of the silent generation made up less than half the electoral in 2020, 44%, falling below the 52% they constituted in both 2016 and 2018. g-z and -- gen-z and millenial voters were about 20%. gen-z made up 47 p-bt of 2020 voters. i'm wondering if you can talk about the overall shift in age demographics in the united states and how those, you know, shift those different population groups will be factors into the 2024 race. guest: this is something scientists call generational replacement. how does american society voting

may haver, policies, change as one generation dies and another generation moves into adulthood and participates in the electoral process and politics. one of the really important demographic changes that is occurring is that the youngest generation looks demographically really different than the oldest generation that they're replacing. so in terms of race and ethnic identity, gen zers are much more diverse when it comes to -- diverse. when it comes to religious affiliation, more people are religiously affiliated, they're more educated and more liberal. young people are more likely to identify as liberal than previous generations. host: what percentage of young voters actually register to vote and turn up to vote? and is there something in particular that motivates

younger voters to come to the ballot box teared -- compared to other generations? guest: youth turnout is historically quite low particularly in mid term elections. but it'll be about half. there are elections when there's a lot of interest. in the last few years there's been more interest among young voters. there are particular issues that animate young voters, like climate change and gun violence. abortion is also an issue that's incredibly important and salient issue. we found no issue ranked as more important for young women than abortion. host: let's get a couple of callers. roger in valley park, missouri, on our independent line. go ahead, roger. caller: yes, hello. america, don't believe the pollsters. i was a pollster. until 2017.

they stopped calling me. i always told the truth abtrump. host: when you say you were a pollster do you mean someone who regularly answered polling questions or that you conducted polls? >> i'm in missouri, it's one of the favorite places for them to call. i received 40, 50 calls a month on a normal election year. host: you. caller: and even in the local elections i'd get 20, 30 calls a month. i've been doing that for 40 years. they stopped calling me in 2017 when i expressed the truth about trump. so the polls are wrong. it's all manipulated. don't believe it. i don't know if we still have you, roger was there another point you want to make? caller: trump's daddy started working for the mafia running two brothels, that's how he got started. host: i do want to get to the idea of how much we can trust

polls. when trump was elect there was a lot of criticism of political polling and especially when we are talking about younger generations who might be less likely to answer the phone for an unknown number when the pollsters call. how reliable is polling? especially when it comes to younger americans? guest: i think there are method logical challenges. when i begun my career in polling, the 2005, 2006, one big concern was cell phone, how would we reach people on cell phones? now one of the reasons he's not receiving as many calls is a lot of interviewing has shifted to online. we do a lot of online panels, representative of the population. it is challenging for pollsters to adapt. and the other thing that's troubling and concerning is the lack of trust in polls kind of feeds on itself. you have people not trusting them so they're not

participating in them, so response rates have also fallen quite significantly. and so there are certain types of folk, certain opinion, who are polled less often that can create bias in some estimates. host: roger myers asked on x, can you speak to the outside and potentially dangerous influence of tiktok over this demographic? guest: yeah, i mean, one of the interesting things about gen-z is historically the way to acquire information was, we would tune in to news, they'd report information. we'd rely on legacy media outlets. now business is the internet. we have lateral information. bloggers to tiktokers.

a lot of young people are getting information from people their own age. i think there's much more trust in some ways of people they feel like they know than from "the new york times" or "washington post." that is a really significant change. the other thing we released a big survey recently on gen-z, and what we found is for jen-z and millenial they grew up not trusting politics on political leaders. unlike xers and baby boomers and silent generation who grew up basically trusting politics, even if nay -- even if they didn't like some politicians. so the formative years gen-z and millenials was shaped by this lack of trust and you're seeing that play out now. host: let's hear from jack from arkansas on our republican line. go ahead, jack. caller: hi. i think that gen-z needs to

learn that republicans are the way to go. nobody wants -- host: let's have some nicer language here. let's talk about health care, daniel. how much of a motivating factor is health care for gen-z voters? guest: it's typically an issue that animates older voters, people who have more interaction and medical needs, they -- and are paying more so they tepid to have more investment in the health care costs and health care access. typically it's an issue that animates older voters. cost of education. gun violence and abortion tend to be issues more important to young people. host: on x, hawk says, i believe young and old that seek higher education are not happy about the inability to discharge their loans if they are unable to find employment to meet their financial strains.

what about student loans and student loan forgiveness, which was a big issue that came up in the last election? guest: yeah, i think the biden-harris folks think this is a winning issue for young voters. and it's broadly popular among college educated young people, many of them have loans. but it doesn't have quite the, i think, salience that tpoebs on the left and right think it does. it's not an issue that we really, you know, animates a lot of folks. i don't think it'll be a big issue in 2024. host: once again, we're taking your calls on young voters in the 2024 race. democrats at 202-74-8000. republicans on 202-748-8001. independents at 202-748-8002. if you'd luke to text us, do that at 202-748-8003, just be sure to include your name and where you're from.

daniel, i want to go to a quote from your opinion piece that you wrote on november 17, or at least published on november 17. young americans like a lot of american, are unhappy with their candidate choices. however, the people most displeased appear to be those who are the most politically engaged. young adults who are politically engaged tend to be more liberal and more critical of biden than those who are paying less attention. can you speak a bit more about how younger voters seem to feel about their candidate choices so far of what we know of them in the 2024 race and what they're planning to do about it? guest: i think there's a lot of folk, not just young people, who are looking with some amount of displeasure to horror at the fact that we're going to likely see a biden-trump rematch. and so there's going to be a lot

of folks, if they vote in 2024, will be holding their nose and voting for the least bad option. but i do think this is a case where campaigns are really, really going to matter. so there's a recent economist poll that found only about half of young people thought that trump was conservative. i think people really aren't paying attention at this point. again, we're a year out. so a lot will be determined on how the campaigns react to issues that they choose to promote. and the learning that goes on. again, people, young people if you're 18, 19, 20, you may not have a, you know, vivid recollection of what trump's administration was like or what even trump's demeanor was like. he hasn't received lot of attention. that will certainly change if he comes out as candidate.

host: we talk about registered voters, likely voters, those who actually vote. can you give us a primer on polling terminology? guest: this is something political pollsters wrestle. with how to de2350eu7b a likely voter or engaged voter. what we're twaoeuing to do if you're judging pre-election polling, you're trying to not only measure candidate support, do you support candidate a or candidate b but more importantly and more difficult, you're trying to get a sense of who is going to be voting. what is the vote going to look like? what are the demographics going to be? that is really difficult and changes election-to-election. and it's something that pollsters use a variety of different types of questions from voter registration to past voting behavior to try to get at. but it is really difficult. >> let's hear from michael in

knoxville, tennessee, on our independent line. go ahead, michael. caller: good morning. at 47 years old, i resent a little that i'm not a young voter anymore. i started out as a democrat, i morphed more toward independent because the democrat party changed so much. but i'm calling about young people and voting. i have a daughter that's 19. she's in college. at, i'll give a shoutout, university of kentucky. she's politically active. she got that from me and her mom. when i talk to her about what the issues concerning her and her generation are, it does touch on what daniel has been talking about but the one point i want to make is that the lack of the knowledge of history. when it comes to young people. that is very problematic. the fact that young people just don't seem to know where they came from. let's take the conflict that's happening in the middle east right now. a lot of young people, this is

to my point, that are backing palestine here in america don't know the history of the state of israel. and i'm just using that as an example. young people don't know their history. when it comes to what young people want, at the end of the day they're not going to vote anyway. that's problematic too. young people do not vote. i've been involved for a long time. i knocked on tkpaors candidates, put up yard signs, one thing i know, young people at thed on they have day will not get out and vote especially on a rainy day like today. host: daniel, he raised two interesting points i'd love to hear your response. to one is the israel-hamas conflict has been a big division that has shown up within democratic -- the democratic party and among democratic voters with some very clear age divisions in terms of where support lies regarding that conflict. i wonder if you can speak to that in terms of how that issue

may play into 2024 and then also, this idea that young people just don't vote. is that true? does it look like it's going to be true in 2024? guest: there's a couple of things. young people have historically voted at far less regularity as older people but young people become older people and their voting behavior becomes solidified after a couple of elections. if you're voting democrat pretty consistently, 18, 20, 22, then there's a good chance you'll be voting democrat for a good, long time. same is true for republicans. and when it comes to foreign policy, i know the israel-hamas conflict received a lot of news coverage, as it rightly should. but i think it can -- we can basically not really appreciate

the amount of people that do not really follow these issues. we focus on college students that are protesting. the politicians who are, you know, speech if iing. but a lot of the u.s. doesn't understand the history. they're not paying attention to it. if you ask folks about the issues most important to their vote, foreign policy tends to be last on the list with the exception of whether the u.s. is in an armed conflict themselves. so again, i think eight months from now, i don't see it as having a huge impact on the election. biden may lose some votes over it. but these are folks that probably won't make a differenct probably won't make a difference in the long run. host: bernie in new york on our democratic line. go ahead. caller: thanks for taking my call. two questions. first is, how do you compose the

question? to the person who is being interviewed? is it, who do you prefer? do you prefer one or the other? do you assume it's going to be a three-way race? and the other thing is, how do you break it down, the male-female? guest: great questions. so one of the things that pollsters spend a lot of time thinking about is how to craft the question. to you include just two options? do you include multiple popgss? most pollsters will include third party options. sometimes they'll name the candidates, whether it's jill stein or robert f. kennedy jr. but a lot goes into these considerations because it impacts the results. the other thing that folks need to be aware of as well is that some pollsters will push folks.

they'll say, well, yeah you said you're not sure who you're supporting. we are 11 months out or so. who are you leaning toward now? and those kind of answers are far more tenuous. so they're more liable to change. people have not given it as much thought or they're more conflict. that's something to be aware of as. we pollsters handle these things differently. host: before you address the gender dynamics the caller asked about, i want to show some cross tabs from that "new york times"-sienna college poll which gives an example of what you were just talking about, daniel. where one of the questions is, thinking about the upcoming election in 2024, if the election were held today who would you vote for if the candidates were joe biden, the democrat, and donald trump, the republican, and then you mention that sometimes pollsters will follow up with people. the followup question there was are you definitely or probably voting for them?

and if needed if you have to decide today who would you vote for? and you break down the answers from there. i guess that's an example of what you were just talking about. guest: yeah, that's right. there's -- i think right think there's some criticism about polling that doesn't provide enough context. so when we get these anomalous, puzzling results, like being split between trump and biden, we don't have enough information, by asking other questions, to understand these -- the nuances of this, how strongly people think this, how much thought have they given to their election preferences? some of the contradictions, i think consumers are rightly sort of scratching their heads saying this couldn't make sense. i think without a thaoer roeuf the case people are more likely to dismiss these results even if perhaps they shouldn't. because we need, you know, we

can make arguments all day but without a compelling explanation it's difficult for folks to trust them. we need to be asking not just the biden trump horse race questions, but we need to get to the concerns people have. host: when it comes to young voters, is there a meaningful skwrebder difference in terms of where voters are leaning one way or the other that we can tell at this point? guest: yeah, this is something that i've spent the last year and a half exploring. it's pretty fascinating what we're seeing. so in about 2014, 2015, polls started showing and emerging ideological gap between young women and young men. it was close to half of young women were for biden,

politically liberal. for young men it was below 3 in 10. a significant gap. we saw this again in our gen-z survey with young women reporting much more, identifying liberal than young men. so it is going to impact voting behavior as well. young women care about abortion a lot more than young men. they're voting democrat more strongly than young men. even though, you know, both generally are. i'm really interested to see how this shows up in 2024. it could have a pretty significant ramification. host: let's hear from curtis on our independent line. caller: thanks for taking my call. my father and i talked about this a lot. my son got the highest score in the country on the ap history six page written essay.

one of the callers called in and said they were talking about history. having two granddaughters, what the kids are taught, he is pretty concerned about the effects of marxism and equity and equality in what the kids are being educated. i was just wondering, you know, what your opinion would be about what they are teaching the kids in these colleges. that was just my question. thank you. host: the want to respond to that, daniel? guest: this is something in both college campuses and in high school. there is increasing attention on what we are being taught. in our surveys and i think in other service, i don't think

there are quite as large divisions as it appears. you get the most strident views that are reflected on television that are showing up to public media. when it comes to what colleges should be teaching, there is a lot of focusing on the basics. teaching kids the basics. that includes history. including the more troubling aspect of american history. so, i think both republicans and democrats generally believe it should be taught. when it comes to gender identity and sexuality, that is where you see the biggest divisions. host: let's hear from crystal in wilkes-barre, pennsylvania. on the democrat line. caller: yes. give me an opportunity to state two things for you and i am african-american and we have not

forgotten slavery. he said we won't remember certain things during the election. we do. we have a long memory. i want to tell you something. over the holiday weekend, i was at a family gathering and all of our children were talking. and although they may not understand the complexities of israel and palestine, what i listened to them say was that they saw young people dying. just like them. and that because of that, they were not going to be voting for biden. now, our last election between trump and biden, i sort of pushed them to vote for biden. they said they would not do it any longer because they could not connect with someone who thought that other people were not human. not human enough to live. so, forget about history. it's what they see on the television every single day. and they can no longer connect

with biden in that way. because of that, these young people that i say get out and vote, let me register you to vote, they have said not again. host: if you don't mind me asking, did these young people that they were -- you were talking to say they were planning to not vote or vote for a different candidate? caller: they did not want to vote for trump of course, but they would not be voting for biden, either. because people of their own age, they watch every day on television, getting killed and they did not want to be part of that. host: let's let daniel respond to that. it seems like this is highlighting something you mentioned earlier. guest: yeah, i think this is the nightmare scenario for the biden campaign. i simply don't believe that trump is going to get much more young voters. but i think that there is a probability that some significant number who either voted in 2020 or lean left and

would otherwise support democratic candidates simply stay home. that said, i do think the campaign is going to be important. i think a lot of folks and a lot of young people simply don't see the difference between trump and biden on a lot of these issues. and i think the campaigns are going to highlight that, both in terms of their personality and demeanor, as well as the issues that they champion and the people that are prioritizing them. so, let's just wait and see what happens. a lot is going to happen over the next 10 months. host: christian is in st. petersburg, florida, on our republican line. caller: good morning. host: good morning. can you turn down your tv, christian, and then go ahead? caller: ok. host: try turning it down one more time before your question. caller: yes, the day, how are

you? i am calling -- i am wondering if the young voters no about the -- know about the history. i have heard that the history is lacking with the younger voters. there is one thing i think that would impact the younger voters and i'd like your opinion on this. if they really understood the effect and the damage that the gop strategy had that was implemented in 1970, and created a whole right wing of the republican party. being a republican, i have already regretted that, only because it invited the southern

prejudice that was promoted by the fact that they recruited these republican racists. host: christian, let's let daniel respond to the idea of the 1970 strategy. guest: yes. i think one of the interesting things that emerged in that time period was, as the caller mentioned, you had southern conservative democrats moving to the republican party. the other thing that happened in this period was the majority of people who were democrats became loyal republicans. in the south in particular, it became a dominant force in

republican politics. that has had a significant impact on the coalition of both parties. particularly how young people view politics and religion. as i said earlier, people are much less religious than previous generations. i think they are increasingly turned off by a lot of the rhetoric. i think that is something that is something to keep and i out for in terms of how it will impact the way people view political parties and who they vote for. host: brian is in washington on our independent line. caller: good morning, washington journal. i have two things to bring up to you. the one is i am a supporter. my mailbox is essential. i support the post office.

and the telephone, the landline, which i am calling you on to be part of your conversation. i noticed in the last couple of weeks and made a point of it to my local television stations that hey, you are not putting a phone number on for us to call your advertisers or the subject of your story, like a nonprofit looking for donations at the food bank. no phone number. but the website of the television station. host: did you have a question specifically on younger voters of the 2024 campaign? caller: yes, my question is for your post to be accurate, you are not getting the whole spectrum if you are eliminating people that can't respond to your surveys because you are not including the landline. you are only on the internet. my other issue is the young people, the guy who called in and said they don't have history has completely forgotten what bernie sanders did with the young people.

and he asked them to support biden because of the trump scenarios. and so, would your host tell us how the young people, my son was one of them, knocking on doors, i thought that was active politically. but my son, who is in college now, tells me they were knocking on doors in the state capital, door-to-door. young people, inspired by bernie . what on earth is going on with you people forgetting about the inspiration of the old man from vermont? guest: let's give daniel a chance to respond. i want to respond to something brian said about the usage of land lines. i found this article from the washington post from june of this year which says barely a quarter of americans still have land lines.

who are they? i am one. i still have a landline. this is a chart here, showing adult populations by phone options available in their household. wireless going way up over time. when it comes to people who have land lines only at this point, it is almost zero. and then there is a mixture of people with landline and wireless. go ahead, daniel. guest: yes, so i think that it is a really interesting point. and one that goes a lot to coverage. are there certain geographic communities or other communities that are systematically excluded from being surveyed. and as we shift in methodologies, that is a constant concern. typically for rural folks, who are getting more difficult to reach. that is something we pay a lot of attention to. in our survey, the ones in our

mind, we also will augment the online surveys with some telephone interviews to make sure that we are capturing folks like the caller who are much more readily reachable on land lines. host: next up, jonathan is an echo lake, california on our democratic line. good morning, jonathan. caller: i think that everybody should get on board with this. host: looks like we are losing you. jesse in albuquerque, new mexico. caller: good morning. mr. cox, i want to ask you a few questions. do you know what the propaganda techniques of card stacking is? did you say no? guest: no, i do not. caller: card stacking is when

you put out a bunch of poles or data that shows the same thing. it's like these republican polls that show trump in the lead. i'm sorry, it is hard stacking and that's a propaganda technique. let me ask you the next question, how valid do you think our polls with very small sample sizes to represent the whole state? host: ok. our most of the polls saying the same thing and can you talk about sample sizes? guest: sure. i have not heard that term before but there are a thing called push polls, which they are polls that are conducted to get a certain answer and then promote the answer. those polls are not great in terms of manipulating responses

and pushing agendas. we don't like those. when it comes to sample sizes and the polling we have seen, it's not all the polls that are showing young voters equally divided. biden maintaining a double-digit lead among younger voters. it's not the case that we are universally seeing these results. i think that makes some sense, given the methodology pollsters are using. we are so far out with people not paying a lot of close attention to the election that we ought to be seeing some variability in responses. the other thing we are going to see is a lot of these surveys are putting out results on very small samples of folks.

for every survey interviewing 1000 people, you will get many interviewing one to 50 or 200. support could be -- 150 or 200. support could be 60% for joe biden or 40%. that is why we take it with a small grain of salt. the other thing we want to do is look at a number of poles over time. if they are all pointing in the same direction, we have some confidence that this is something real. if we are seeing polls jump over the place, we don't have as much confidence that it is actually real. host: next is john in cleveland, ohio on our independent line. caller: thank god i'm not in a wheelchair and a nursing home.

i am 88 years old as of two weeks ago. the reason why we have to talk about voting for the young generation is because we don't teach civics in the first place. we let five big states decide what's going on. when they finish hostile, don't give them a diploma until they do community service or public service. wall street, i used to go to wall street twice a month, years ago. all i'm trying to say is this. george washington never wanted two parties. host: we want to get to a couple

more callers before we have to let daniel go. do you have a response to that caller? guest: so, i will respond to a couple of things. when it comes to political reforms like doing away with the electoral college or electing a president, there is a fair amount of support for those reforms, particularly among young people. young people support a multiparty system given their strong support for third candidates. i don't think those kinds of reforms are particularly likely. but, there is a strong amount of political support for them, particularly among young people. host: joe is in minneapolis, minnesota on our democratic line. caller: good morning. host: good morning. caller: i'm calling in about a couple of things. a lot of people are saying that young people are not educated

enough or they don't know history or anything. well, young people have always been like that because they are young people. before they know it, they will be old people. i think we have to do whatever we can to encourage them to become involved and to vote. their outlook as a young person is legitimate. i'm wondering, has there ever been any polling done asking if candidates -- because both joe biden and donald trump -- neither are spring chickens -- has there ever been a poll done saying if joe biden were to die or come to some illness, who would you support? what would you do? that is different from what is your second choice or who else would you like. host: let's let daniel respond to that. there has been much discussion of the ages of