Biden’s Foray Into Late Night TV Flops as Young Voters Tune Out the Democratic Frontrunner

Viewership was down in the 25-54 age group, a crucial demographic that helped secure President Biden’s win in 2020.

AP/Evan Vucci
President Biden talks with Seth Meyers during a taping of 'Late Night with Seth Meyers' February 26, 2024, at New York. AP/Evan Vucci

Younger viewers seem to be uninterested in President Biden’s late night appearance with Seth Meyers on Monday night as the gap widens between the 81-year-old president and young American voters.

Mr. Biden’s interview on Mr. Meyers’s NBC talk show raked in roughly 852,000 average total viewers, but only 181,000 viewers in the 25-54 age demographic, according to Nielsen Media Research. Viewership from that age group was down 32 percent compared to the same day last year.

The data fit with the declining popularity among young Americans when it comes to both the late night show and the president. An Axios-Generation Lab survey discloses that Mr. Biden has a lead of just four points over President Trump with voters under 35 — a crucial demographic that helped secure Mr. Biden’s win in 2020.

While Mr. Biden took aim at Mr. Trump’s age on Monday night — “he’s about as old as I am,” the president said of his predecessor — his own age became apparent with his several rhetorical missteps during the conversation. He trailed off while deriding Mr. Trump as a “dictator” and referred to his plan for the rest of this year as “the 2020 agenda.”

Even the magazine Variety thought Mr. Biden’s rare media moment was a miss. The interview marked 10 years since Mr. Meyers’s first show in 2014 when Mr. Biden, as vice president, appeared as a guest. “That also called attention to Biden’s most crucial liability in 2024,” Variety’s Daniel D’Addario wrote, “the fact that time has passed.”


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