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CNN —
It’s jarring to hear American children talk about politics and to see the angry political debate in this country expressed through young people.
When asked what word he would use to describe former President Donald Trump, a child responding “pure evil” suggests a level of division that may surprise the average American.
In a new survey for CNN, researchers found that kids in Democratic states were more likely to promote polarization and say they would not be friends with someone who supports Trump, while kids in Republican states were more likely to repeat the misinformation.
The findings are the result of more than 40 hours of interviews conducted by CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” to discuss politics with 80 elementary school students in the 2024 presidential battleground states of Arizona, Democratic New Jersey and Republican Texas.
With parents’ permission, the researchers solicited children’s honest opinions about the presidential candidates and the election.
CNN did not identify the students or schools visited, and this was not a representative poll but a series of interviews designed to gauge polarization among kids.
For the project, Ashley Landrum, an assistant professor at Arizona State University who is an expert on child development and a media psychologist, collaborated with Shant Iyengar, a political science professor at Stanford University who has already studied polarization among American teens. Landrum asked elementary school students a series of questions using pictures and other visual cues to understand how they feel about the political system.
Questions about the presidential candidates included who they thought would keep them safe, who is more honest and who is more likely to do bad things.
The interviews were first conducted in the spring, when President Joe Biden was seeking reelection, and the children were in the fourth grade. Most of the same children participated in additional interviews in New Jersey and Texas in the fall, when Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee and the children were in the fifth grade.
Most kids interviewed in the fall, nearly two-thirds, supported Harris. Support was split evenly in Texas, a big gain for Democrats in a Republican-leaning state compared to when Biden was campaigning. Polls of national voters project the race for the White House to be tighter, with Trump leading in Texas.
What do kids think about Trump and Harris?
In September, kids were asked whether they liked Harris or Trump better on a five-point scale. Kids in blue Democratic states were more likely to say they liked Harris a lot and disliked Trump a lot, while kids in red Republican states liked Trump but were neutral or favorable about Harris, according to Landrum’s analysis.
Asked by Landrum to describe the candidates in one word, responses to Trump ranged from positive – “Go America!” one child said in May – to very negative. There was also criticism of Harris – “liar” was one child’s word for her.
According to Landrum’s analysis, in May, “three children who supported Biden spontaneously brought up Hitler while talking about Donald Trump.”
During the Biden-Trump campaign in May, children were asked to choose an emoji that expressed their feelings about the candidates. Only a quarter of children who supported Trump chose an emoji that said they felt anxious or worried when they saw Biden, but more than half of children who supported Biden chose that emoji when asked about Trump. The disparity was even greater when the interviews were repeated in September and children were asked about Trump and Harris.
Iyengar was surprised by the study’s overall findings.
“Among adults, Republicans are typically more hostile toward Democrats,” he said. “This says something about the characters in this race: Kamala Harris is relatively unknown, and therefore people have less extreme opinions of her, positive or negative.”
Meanwhile, Trump is an “established trigger,” and kids in Democratic states are “taking what their parents tell them and becoming quite hostile toward Trump,” Iyengar said.
There were also many positive responses, such as one girl who chose a happy emoji and replied, “I’m a woman too,” in response to President Biden’s support of women’s rights.
Trump kids offered interesting reasons to acknowledge the former president’s shortcomings: One boy argued that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both slave owners, “which was really bad, but they still served two terms as president.”
“So even though Trump has done bad things, I still think he’s qualified to run for president,” the boy said.
The same boy also expressed difficulty choosing between Ms Harris and Mr Trump in September when shown photos of them and asked who he thought was more likely to do bad things.
“What would you choose between a convicted felon and a liar?” he said. He ultimately decided that while Trump, a convicted felon, was more likely to do bad things, it was okay for a felon to be president.
Does it matter that Kamala Harris will be the first female president?
A majority of kids who support Trump also agreed that Harris would be a good president “in some ways,” and kids in Republican-leaning states supported Harris more in September than they supported Biden in May.
Most kids (about two-thirds, including a majority in Republican states) said it would be a good thing for a woman to become president, but a minority worried that others might not support a woman.
Only one girl, from Texas, said a woman shouldn’t be president. “Girls are a little dramatic sometimes,” she said in response to a question about which candidate was more selfish, adding, “The only people who’ve ever been president are boys. Boys are stronger.” But that was the exception.
Across both red and blue states, most kids surveyed – over 80% overall – said they thought the country was ready for a woman of color to become president.
“It would be nice to have the first black woman become president in history, but I’m still voting for Trump,” one girl said.
Make friends with people who support Trump and Harris
In both May and September, Landrum showed children pictures of homes with Trump signs and homes with Biden or Harris signs and asked if they or their parents would be comfortable visiting. Landrum said most children were open to visiting homes of either party. But a higher percentage of Democratic-supporting children (a third in September) were unwilling to visit the homes of children whose families supported Trump, she added. Very few Trump-supporting children said they would not want to visit Democratic-supporting homes.
One child whose family supports Biden told May he imagined arguments would break out if the whole family visited Trump’s house. “Maybe a food fight or something,” he speculated.
Another boy went in a different direction, using a food analogy to argue that someone who likes pizza can date someone who likes burgers: “You can still be friends.”
One girl came to the same conclusion with a different comparison: “I like Taylor Swift and they like Olivia Rodrigo, but we’re still friends,” she said.
In September, Landrum asked kids whether Swift’s endorsement of Harris would affect the election. Nearly all New Jersey kids said it would, while just over half of Texas kids said it would.
“The Swifties will follow her lead,” one boy said.
But when Landrum broke down the responses by gender, he found that while more than 90% of male respondents thought Swift would influence the election, fewer than two-thirds of women thought the same.
Questions about Biden’s age and health ultimately led to him being removed from the presidential race. In May interviews, most students did not specifically cite age as a reason for opposing either candidate. About a third mentioned age in other contexts, most of which suggested being “old” was a weakness.
A boy from Texas was convinced Biden had dementia.
“He might not say it, but he’s forgotten a lot of things,” the boy said in May.
Pro-Trump participants did not see Trump’s legal troubles as a reason to not support him. Although most of those who brought up Trump’s legal issues were from Democratic states, the May interviews were conducted shortly after Trump was convicted in a New York court of falsifying business records; the interviews in Arizona and Texas were conducted earlier.
“I don’t want someone who committed a crime to become president. I don’t feel that safe,” the New Jersey girl said.
Most respondents, more than half, seemed unaware of why Trump was facing legal trouble in both the New York lawsuit and three other lawsuits alleging he tried to overturn the 2020 election and mishandled classified documents.
Landrum said many kids repeated lies about the candidates, most of which were directed at Trump, but kids in Republican-leaning states made more statements that could be considered misinformation. In September, Landrum asked the kids follow-up questions about where they heard certain claims, which often came from their parents.
One of the good misinformation stories aimed at Trump is that he donates much of his fortune to the U.S. military, but this is not true.
One child in a Democratic-leaning state complained that Trump has supported people spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines, including that the vaccine can attach metal to people’s bodies. This is false, and there is no evidence that Trump has supported anyone making such claims.
Another girl said she had heard “some people say she believes in a different god” about Harris, who is Baptist and her husband is Jewish.
The researchers found that for kids in both Democratic and Republican states, parents, family and television news were the main sources of information, but kids in Republican states also relied more heavily on YouTube and TikTok.
Children in Republican states were more likely to have smartphones, but children in Democratic states were more likely to have tablets.
As one child said about the Trump-Harris presidential debate, misinformation can come from anywhere.
“Probably the million-dollar statement that Trump made was, ‘Illegal immigrants are coming to eat our pets,'” he said, repeating Trump’s false comments about Haitian immigrants.
Read the authors’ full synopsis of this project, “Kids in Politics.”
