WASHINGTON — In some ways, President Donald Trump has brought Tammy Kennedy and her daughter, Sue Ann, together on politics.
They don’t agree on every issue— Tammy supports abortion rights, for example, while Sue Ann opposes them. Even so, the two agree on most issues and disapprove of the way Trump is doing his job.
“I think we’ve talked about him in terms of immigration,” said Tammy, 51, of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration that has resulted in the separation of some parents and children at the borders. “I can’t imagine my child being ripped away from me.”
“We do agree on his performance,” Sue Ann, 18, said.
They’re part of a majority of American young people and their parents who disapprove of the job the president is doing, a poll shows. The survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV found that 57 percent of parents and 73 percent of young people ages 15 to 26 disapprove of the president’s performance.
The common ground doesn’t end there. The generations also agree that politics have become dysfunctional, and both say they’re unhappy with the two-party system.
On issues broadly, 55 percent of young people and their parents say they usually see eye to eye, and 31 percent say they debate things diplomatically. Just 9 percent say they avoid talking politics, and only 5 percent say their debates turn into “World War III.”
And most say they agree with each other on a wide variety of individual issues, including feelings on the economy, health care, immigration, racism and abortion.
Still, hotheadedness abounds over politics, as anyone who has access to the internet knows. The survey showed that online, especially, politics seeps into interactions with extended family members. Twenty percent of young people and their parents say they have done the virtual equivalent of uninviting a family member — by blocking them or unfriending them — because of a disagreement over politics.
The two generations are equally likely to engage on social media on the Nov. 6 elections, the study found. A quarter of parents and young people say they’ll post or comment on the midterms, and similar percentages say they share memes about the races.
Among parents and young people who say they aren’t of the same mind, young people say they tend to disagree with their parents most about racism, while their parents say the largest area of disagreement is gun control. Both generations tend to point to Trump and LGBT rights as sources of contention.