CNN —
A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds Vice President Kamala Harris has a 12-point lead over former President Donald Trump among voters under the age of 35, a demographic that is deeply dissatisfied with their influence in American politics but optimistic about the country’s future.
Harris leads Trump 52% to 40% among voters under 35. Still, exit polls suggest the race will be tighter among this age group than it was in 2020, when President Joe Biden won by 21 points among them. But it marks a return to more typical voting patterns, after polls earlier this year showed Biden struggling to rally support among young people for a second term.
The gender gap seen among voters of all ages persists with this group: Women under 35 prefer Harris over Trump by 53% to 39%, while men are closer in favor. And among registered voters, young women are 15 percentage points more likely to express a favorable opinion of Harris than men.
Over the past year, polls on young people’s support for the presidential election have fluctuated widely. While the latest polls suggest that Harris’s rise to the top has revived younger voters’ support for the Democratic candidate, the surveys offer mixed views on the magnitude of Harris’ advantage among young people. While not all pollsters report the same age groups when assessing young people’s support, national state of the race polls conducted over the past few days have found a widening gap among young people, ranging from a slim Harris +3 lead (a Quinnipiac University poll of 18-34 voters) to a Harris +32 lead (a Harvard Institute of Politics poll of 18-29 voters).
The latest CNN poll surveyed more young voters than is typically done in most national polls to give more confidence to the results of this key voting group, and its results suggest that Harris has slightly stronger support among voters under 30 than among those 18 to 34 (55% for Harris, to 38% for Trump in that group).
In an election race deeply rigidly fueled by partisanship, the CNN poll suggests that younger voters may be the segment of the electorate most likely to waver: 19% of voters under 35 say they are completely undecided about their choice in this election, compared with 12% of those over 35. There is also a lot of uncertainty about who will vote among younger voters: Only about half of young registered voters are very motivated to vote or feel it is very important to vote, both figures significantly lower than older voters.
Young Trump supporters are 10 percentage points less likely to describe themselves as “very motivated” and 11 percentage points less likely to say their vote matters very much than young Harris supporters, which is consistent with findings in other recent polls of this age group. There are also gender differences, with young female voters 13 percentage points more likely than male voters to feel their vote is extremely important.
Young voters have come of age in a unique political era: Two-thirds of voters under 35 say they only became interested in politics after the Obama administration, while about one-sixth say their memories go back to the Trump presidency.
Young voters’ memories of Trump are largely bad, with 57% calling his presidency a failure, more than any other age group. But their feelings about the Biden administration are even more negative, with 67% calling it a failure. Still, about three in 10 young voters who see the Biden administration as a failure say they plan to vote for Harris, a larger share than she holds among disgruntled voters of any age. Young white voters are 15 points more likely than older white voters to call Trump a failure, but that trend is reversed among young voters of color, who are slightly more likely than older voters to say Trump’s time in office has been largely a success.
Among younger voters, Trump has a favorable rating of just 34%, and their view of Harris is generally neutral: 47% favorable and 45% unfavorable. Nearly half of young voters (51%) say Trump has made their view of the Republican Party worse overall, nearly double the 27% who say his view has improved. Younger Republican voters are more likely than older voters to say Trump has improved their perception of the Republican Party: 66% of Republican voters under 35 say so, compared to about half (51%) of voters over 35.
Harris has far less negative feelings toward Democrats but also does not enjoy widespread enthusiastic support: 35% say Harris has had a negative impact on their view of Democrats, while 27% say she has improved their view of Democrats. Overall, half of registered voters say Trump has worsened their view of the Republican Party, while 40% say Harris has worsened their view of Democrats.
About 44% of young registered voters say they are Democrats or lean Democratic, 33% say they are Republicans or lean Republican, and 23% say they don’t lean to either party. Voters’ party affiliation has remained fairly stable over time, but there is some room for variation. Among all registered voters, 38% of those who are not currently Democrats say they once considered themselves a Democrat, and 28% of those who are not currently Republican say they once considered themselves a Republican. Even among young voters, about a third say they once considered themselves a member of a political party they no longer belong to.
Voters of all ages make the economy their top priority. This is especially true among Trump supporters, who say roughly 6 in 10 of them make it their top priority, roughly the same for younger and older voters. But there’s a big age divide among Harris supporters. In contrast to older Harris supporters, who say protecting democracy is more important than any other issue in this election, younger Harris supporters are more focused on abortion and reproductive rights, with 30% calling it their top issue, and fewer calling either the economy (21%) or protecting democracy (20%) their top priority.
While overall voters give Trump a significant edge over Harris on the economy, younger voters are more closely divided, with 43% backing Trump on the issue and 42% backing Harris. Younger voters also give Harris significant advantages over Trump on abortion and reproductive rights (57% to 28%), protecting democracy (50% to 33%) and addressing the concerns of the next generation of Americans (49% to 35%).
Nearly two-thirds of voters under 35 say they are dissatisfied with the influence people like them have on the political process, with dissatisfaction especially growing among young, white voters. And a majority of young voters, 88%, say the American political system needs at least major reform, but only about one-third say it needs a complete overhaul. Most remain optimistic about the future of the United States, with 58% saying America’s best is yet to come and 42% saying America’s best is behind it.
Many of these figures mirror those of the electorate as a whole, suggesting that it’s not just young voters who are disillusioned with the state of the country: 62% of registered voters say they are dissatisfied with the influence people like them have on the political process, 41% say the country’s best days are behind it, and 36% say the American political system is in need of an overhaul — up 20 points since 2003.
But pessimism about America and the desire for fundamental change in how it is governed polarize more sharply among older voters. Younger Harris supporters are 13 points more likely than younger Trump supporters to say the country’s best days are ahead and 6 points less likely to say the nation’s political system needs an overhaul. Between older Harris and Trump supporters, the partisan gap is nearly twice as wide or more.
A majority of registered voters under 35 say the federal government isn’t doing enough to help people like them (64%) and younger Americans in general (72%) — in both cases higher than the percentage of overall voters who say the same. Additionally, 81% of younger voters say the government doesn’t do enough for working-class Americans, while 72% of registered voters under 35 and 64% of all voters say the government focuses too much on helping the wealthy.
The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS online and by phone on September 19-22, 2024 among 2,074 registered voters nationwide drawn from a probability-based panel. Likely voters include all registered voters in the poll weighted based on their projected likelihood to vote in this year’s election. The survey included an oversample to reach a total of 624 registered voters under the age of 35. This group is weighted to its appropriate size within the population for all survey results. The margin of sample error for results among the full sample of registered voters is plus or minus 3.0 percentage points, the same among likely voters, and larger for subgroups. The margin of sample error for results among registered voters under the age of 35 is plus or minus 5.6 percentage points, and among likely voters under the age of 35 is plus or minus 5.4 percentage points.
CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta and Edward Wu contributed to this report.
