John Della Volpe

Welcome, everybody, to The Making of a President.

My guest today is John DellaVolpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics and the man behind the Harvard Youth Poll, the gold standard of youth polling.

John is also the founder and CEO of SocialSphere, where he focuses on understanding the attitudes, values, and behaviors of young Americans and their impact on politics.

I've known John for over a decade, and in 2024 he was one of the first people in politics to pick up on the trend of Gen Z men moving away from the Democratic Party and toward Donald Trump.

Dan Nathan is back, co-founder of Risk Reversal and a CNBC Fast Money contributor.

And the man behind the polling at the Harvard Kennedy School of Kennedy School Institute of Politics, John Della Volpe, is here.

John started off.

What'd you learn? I learned we learned that we're talking with we're talking about a generation that is losing confidence in the basic promise.

Yeah.

I talked to John Della Volpe a little bit about this too.

And in this group, the under 30 group in America, there is a strong predisposition to vote Democrat.

And among those who call themselves independent, that remains.

And he calls his campaign manager into another room and says, what do we do now? And the answer to that question for Democratic leaders had better be something that responds to all of these concerns that you've laid out so well in this poll.

Yeah, no, there's no question about it.

And again, folks, go listen to the discussion that we had with John Della Volpe, who is the man who has overseen the poll.

Go read the poll at the Harvard Institute of Politics.

Tucker Carlson's net favorable rating has dropped by 12 points as well.

According to Peter Hamby, writing over Epoch, John Della Volpe, the director of the Youth Polling from Social Sphere, has been tracking young voter sentiment for a quarter century, making him one of the nation's foremost Gen Z bro-ologists.

If Joe Biden's honeymoon lasted arguably eight months until the Afghanistan withdrawal, Donald Trump's honeymoon only lasted about 90 days with young men, Della Volpe said.

Once he started talking about tariffs, we could see how quickly the mood changed, and we saw that more younger people believed he would have a negative, not a positive impact on their lives.

Quick programming note, a new episode of my new-ish podcast, The Making of a President, is out Tuesday, tomorrow morning.

My interview this week is with my pal John Della Volpe.

We've collaborated a lot over the years on the youth vote, and John goes deep with me on those Trump bros.

Young men who voted for Trump, yes, they've flipped on Donald Trump.

They also believe rich people and wealthy organizations have more influence on members of Congress than the individuals who vote for them.

Let's bring in MS now contributor, author, and pollster John Della Volpe.

Also with us is Jeff Clements.

He is the CEO of American Promise, a non-partisan group focused on reducing the influence of money in politics, which commissioned this poll.