Ericka Henriquez

On Tuesday, the Yale Youth Poll, or YYP, released the results of its largest youth poll in the country, revealing the political temperature in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. 

The poll was led by a team of six Yale undergraduates and funded through the Democratic Innovations Program at Yale’s Institution for Political and Social Policy Studies. The team conducted the poll through the survey platform Prolific from Oct. 7 to Oct. 8, gathering responses from a random sample of 5,500 registered American voters. 

“Our focus was democracy reform,” said Milan Singh ’26, the founder of the poll and an Opinion editor at the News. “It’s important to look at what people see as the greatest threat to democracy and which reforms they find the most promising, and there’s a deficit of high-quality data regarding this information available publicly.” 

The age demographic of the poll was split between 2,750 participants aged 18-29 and 2,750 aged 30 and above. Results were weighted by age, race, education, gender and party affiliation to accurately reflect the American population. The survey asked participants about the presidential race, their opinions on the state of American democracy and key issues in the election, as well as assessed their civic knowledge. 

YYP’s Deputy Director Jack Dozier ’27 pointed to the two age demographics as a novel design. 

“Most youth polls just survey people who are 18 to 29, but this is an incomplete analysis,” Dozier said. “Our survey contextualizes what youth are thinking in the broader population.” 

The survey assessed differences and similarities between the views of young people and the overall electorate. It found that young voters were generally more liberal than the overall electorate. While Harris had a narrow 47-46 percentage point lead over Trump among all voters, she led 56-35 with young voters. 

The poll team highlighted that voters overall were tied on whether to end military aid to Israel, but young voters supported ending aid by a 39.6-point margin.

When asked whether the Supreme Court mostly rules on the legal merits of the case at hand or to advantage one political party or ideological group, 46 percent of the whole sample selected the former and 42 percent the latter. On the other hand, the divide was 49-33 among younger voters. 

Younger voters ranked gerrymandering as the top threat to democracy, with 70.8 percent ranking the issue above election fraud and left-wing extremism.

The team also highlighted that young voters generally had a less accurate knowledge on the workings of the U.S. government compared to the older electorate. Only a third of both age demographics could select the correct description of the functions of the Senate filibuster. 

In the face of the upcoming election, Singh pointed to shifts in candidate support of various racial groups as a key data point. 

“Take it with a grain of salt. The best practice is to look at an average of all polls and not just rely on one, but that being said, caveat, caveat, caveat, Trump is on track to have the largest gains with Black voters this election,” Singh said. “Harris’ margin in our poll was 50 points with black voters, and Joe Biden’s margin [in 2020] was 82 points. That’s a pretty significant shift.” 

Singh expressed that while it may be too late into the campaign to use the data to shape political strategy in the race, it is still important for setting expectations for election night.

Following the 2024 presidential election, the YYP hopes to conduct another survey in the spring that delves deeper into the effectiveness of different messages regarding election integrity and voters’ opinions on various anti-gerrymandering reforms. 

Professor Josh Kalla ’14, who served as the advisor of the project, emphasized the importance of polls like the YYP for democracy. 

“One of the most important ways in which we hope for democracy to function is for our elected officials to understand where the public stands on an issue and to convert that public opinion into public policy,” Kalla said. “They can’t do this without understanding where the public stands at a high level, and young voters are a big  part of that.” 

More information and regular polling updates can be found at the YYP X account.