Donald Trump Is Crushing Kamala Harris Among Younger Voters

Donald Trump is crushing Kamala Harris among younger voters, according to a new poll.

The poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University between July 19 and 21, found that among the 18-34 age group, Trump fared better than Harris, with 58 percent of those surveyed supporting the former president compared to Harris’ 39 percent.

When asked how they would vote if Trump were facing President Biden, the former president had a 17-point lead over Biden in the 18-34 age group, with 54 percent saying they would vote for Trump, while 37 percent said they would vote for the president.

“The dramatic reset at the top of the Democratic ticket does little to move the race as Vice President Harris enters the fray with numbers similar to President Biden,”
said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy. The poll surveyed 1,376 adults 18 years and older and had a 2.6 percent margin of error.

The results may be a cautionary tale for the Harris campaign, which launched after Biden announced on Sunday that he would no longer seek reelection amid mounting questions over his health and cognitive ability. Biden’s approval rating among the young demographic declined owing in part to his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which has yielded an 81 percent disapproval rating amongst voters younger than 35, according to CNN. Polling by the network shows Harris is outperforming Biden among young voters in a head-to-head with Trump.

The Harris campaign has already reached out to Democratic-aligned youth groups like the College Democrats of America and Voters of Tomorrow, according to a CNN report.

Poll Results

According to the Quinnipiac University poll, Trump performed best among 18-34-year-olds, while Harris performed best among those aged 65 and over, with 54 percent of the age range opting to vote for Harris, while 43 percent chose Trump.

Support for Trump among young voters has emerged in polling in recent months, bucking a decades-old trend that has seen Democratic presidential candidates overwhelmingly win young voters.

In an April 3 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll, Biden led Trump by eight points among voters 45 and older, while he trailed Trump by two points among Millennial and Gen Z voters.

Meanwhile, a Fox News poll from March found that in a head-to-head matchup, Trump beat Biden among voters 65 and older by six points, while he led Biden with voters under 30 by 18 points.

Some experts have said polls should not be afforded too much attention when making judgments about voting behavior among the younger generations because traditional phone polling could make it difficult to capture young voters.

“Even if they’re on a cell phone, they’re much less likely to answer it,” Abby Kiesa, the deputy director of CIRCLE, a nonpartisan research institute on youth engagement based at Tufts University in Massachusetts told Politico. “That makes it hard when people are trying to use phone surveys to reach a representative sample of young people.”

The Quinnipiac University poll was conducted via cell phone calls.

No Republican has won young voters since George H.W. Bush‘s landslide victory in 1988, and no Democrat has carried the senior vote since Al Gore hammered Bush’s son, George W. Bush, on Social Security in 2000, Politico wrote in an analysis of the electorate.

Voting behavior surveys have shown that 18-30-year-olds are typically the least engaged age group at elections, with just 13 percent of validated voters in 2016 being under 30, according to the Pew Research Center.

‘Kamala IS brat’

Shortly after Biden’s announcement on Sunday, dozens of endorsements flooded in for Harris, including an unlikely one from British popstar, Charli XCX, who has a huge following among Gen Z.

“Kamala IS brat,” she wrote on X, in reference to her album titled Brat released in June.

The idea of a “brat summer” has gone viral on the internet, seen as a rejection of “clean girl” culture and an embracement of hedonism, fun and rebelliousness.

When speaking on the TikTok series Off the Record, Charli XCX, described what brat meant to her, saying: “You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes.

“Who feels like herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like parties through it, is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile. Like, does dumb things. But it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.”

In the hours after Biden announced he would be endorsing Harris as his replacement, Kamala HQ, the official campaign account for Harris, set its cover photo in the style of the Brat album.