A majority of young Americans without student debt support Biden canceling it for everyone else, new poll finds

asheffey@businessinsider.com (Ayelet Sheffey) -

A Student Borrower Protection Center poll found the majority of young people support student-loan relief.

That's even among Republicans, and those without student debt balances.

Biden noted a decision on loan forgiveness will be made in coming weeks.

Student-loan forgiveness is popular among young likely voters — even those who never had debt balances themselves.

On Wednesday, the Student Borrower Protection Center, in partnership with Data for Progress, released a poll provided exclusively to Insider that found 71% of likely voters aged 18-34 support student-debt cancellation, and 66% of them with no student debt still support relief. The polling was conducted from March 17 to May 3 among 664 respondents.

"Younger voters put Joe Biden in the White House on the promise of broad relief from the crushing burden of student debt," Mike Pierce, executive director of Student Borrower Protection Center which advocates for debt relief, said in a statement. "As the country recovers from a devastating pandemic and economic crisis, younger voters across the political spectrum are clear in their expectations for the Biden-Harris administration: building back better means canceling student debt for all borrowers."

The support for some or all cancellation of student debt was also among 56% of Republicans, 66% of independents, and 84% of Democrats. These results come as the conversation surrounding potential student-loan relief is picking up, with Biden recently saying a decision on forgiveness will be made in the coming weeks. While he noted he is not considering $50,000 in forgiveness — an amount many progressive lawmakers were hoping for — it's looking likely at least his $10,000 forgiveness campaign pledge will be fulfilled.

While many Republican lawmakers have argued forgiving student debt would hurt the economy and be unfair to those who already paid it off, Wednesday's poll results suggest otherwise. It also echoes a notion New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed earlier this month, in which she noted loan forgiveness is beneficial for everyone, even those without debt.

"Maybe student loan forgiveness doesn't impact you," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in an Instagram story. "That doesn't make it bad. I am sure there are certainly other things that student loan borrowers' taxes pay for. We can do good things and reject the scarcity mindset that says doing something good for someone else comes at the cost of something for ourselves."

Still, midterm elections are approaching and Democratic lawmakers have warned Biden that if he does not act on student debt, he's likely to lose the support of young voters. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren told The Atlantic in January that canceling student debt "would persuade a lot of young people that this president is in the fight for them."

For now, the over 4o million federal student-loan borrowers are waiting to hear what relief they will get before payments are set to resume after August 31. It might be broad forgiveness, but Education Secretary Miguel Cardona recently told MSNBC that "at some point, people are going to have to start paying what they can afford to pay."