U.S. President Joe Biden’s approval rating among college voters is 63%, according to a new Harvard Youth Poll, the highest for that demographic in the poll’s 21-year history.The poll said other high approval ratings by college voters came in 2003 for then-President George W. Bush, who received 61% approval, and in 2016 for then-President Barack Obama, with 57% approval.Overall, the Harvard Youth Poll, released Friday, found that 59% of young adults ages 18 to 29 approved of Biden’s job performance.His highest marks came from his handling of the coronavirus (65% approval), climate change (58% approval), education (58% approval) and race relations (57% approval).Biden’s popularity among young voters is a sharp contrast from this time last year, when only 34% of young adults viewed Biden favorably, according to the Spring 2020 Harvard Youth Poll.Friday’s poll also found that young Americans were more hopeful about the future of the country than they had been in the fall of 2017, during President Donald Trump’s first year in office. At that time, only 31% of young Americans were hopeful about country’s future, while now 56% have hope.The jump was most pronounced in young Blacks and Hispanics. Only 18% of young Blacks and 29% of young Hispanics had called themselves hopeful in 2017, while in the latest poll, 72% of Black youths and 69% of Hispanic youths said they were hopeful about America.The poll also found that politics could be personally divisive for youth, with nearly one-third (31%) of young Americans saying that politics had gotten in the way of a friendship.
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