According to a Harvard Institute of Politics survey, Vice President Harris is nearly twice as popular among 18- to 29-year-olds as former President Trump. Youth survey. The poll also showed the gap in support between Harris and Trump supporters has widened, with Harris' supporters holding a 15-point lead.
“In just a few weeks, VP Harris has generated a wave of enthusiasm among young voters,” Anil Kakodkar, director of the Harvard Public Opinion Project, told The Hill. “Harris enjoys a perfect combination of personal appeal, policy support and positive social media influence.”
In the poll, conducted between Sept. 4 and Sept. 18, nearly three in four Democrats under the age of 30 said they planned to vote, while only three in five young Republicans said they planned to vote.
The spring version of this poll showed just a two-point lead between Democrats and Republicans.
meanwhile Spring poll, Three-quarters of Trump supporters said they enthusiastically supported their candidate, while fewer than half of Biden supporters said the same. More than four-fifths of Harris supporters said they enthusiastically supported her. Trump's approval rating remained roughly steady.
Harris has poured significant campaign resources into reaching out to young voters, including a pledge to visit 150 college campuses. Her staff has also created numerous memes and video compilations on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok to drum up interest among young people.
It was a stark shift from Mr. Biden, whose campaign did little to inspire many young voters, especially in the midst of Israel's onslaught on the Gaza Strip following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. A spring edition of a Harvard University poll found that fewer than one in five young voters approved of Mr. Biden's handling of the conflict.
The September survey also revealed a widening gender gap: In the spring, there was a 17-point difference between men and women supporting Biden. In support of Harris, the gap is now more than 30 points, even though both men and women are leaning more toward her.
More than half of the men surveyed plan to support Harris, while seven in 10 women support her. More than one in three men plan to support Trump, while nearly one in five women plan to support him.
Breaking it down by race, Harris led black voters by 30 points over Biden in spring polls, and has regained the lead among white voters, who led Trump by 2 points in spring polls. Harris now leads by 15 points.
“As the race enters its final stages, polling reveals a significant shift in the overall mood and preferences of young Americans,” IOP polling director John Della Volpe wrote in The Hill. “Vice President Harris has strengthened the Democratic Party's position among young voters, leading Trump on key issues and personal qualities. The growing enthusiasm of Gen Z and young millennials indicates that the youth vote could play a decisive role in 2024.”
Harris has also made big gains among younger voters, going from fewer than a third of voters in a spring poll to nearly half in a September poll who had a favorable opinion of her job performance.
Other polls have also shown an increase in Harris' popularity and approval rating: In a recent NBC poll, her approval rating increased by 16 points, the largest increase for a politician in an NBC News poll since former President George W. Bush's approval rating increased after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The Harvard poll also found that more than half of respondents had come across a meme or joke posted about either candidate in the past month, and more than twice as many of those who had come across a meme said it had an overall positive impact on their perception of Harris.
Nearly twice as many people whose views of Trump changed after seeing a meme about him said they now had a more negative impression of him.
The Harvard Youth Poll, conducted in September, surveyed 2,002 young people ages 18 to 29 with a margin of error of 2.65 percentage points. The Harvard Poll is the most comprehensive youth poll currently being conducted in the nation.
