Since entering the race in July, Harris has galvanized women and opened a yawning gender gap.
This article was produced in collaboration with The Fuller Project.
During her short campaign for the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris has reinvigorated the nation’s youngest voters—particularly women under 30, who support her by a massive 3:1 margin, according to a new national poll released Tuesday by the Institute of Politics at Harvard.
Harris also gained support among young men, and enjoys a 2:1 lead over the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, among likely voters under the age of 30, the Harvard Youth Poll reported. Her strength among young people stands in sharp contrast to that of Trump and the man she replaced atop the Democratic ticket, President Joe Biden. Both men had lackluster support among youth in the same poll last spring.
“The overall vibe has shifted, as well as preferences,” said John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, which produces the poll.
The poll of more than 2,000 young people found that 61 percent of likely young voters favor Harris and 30 percent back Trump. And while Harris, unlike Hillary Clinton before her, is not promoting her candidacy for its potential to break barriers, she is drawing the most strength from women.
Since entering the race in July, Harris has galvanized women and opened a yawning gender gap. A recent NBC News poll shows her with a 21-point advantage among women, while Trump has only an 8-point lead among men. Because Democrats typically dominate among women and Republicans win among men, Harris has to retain a greater level of female support in order to defeat Trump.
Young women appear poised to help. The Vice President has nearly doubled the gender gap that existed among voters under 30 when Biden was the Democratic presidential candidate. That gap, which measures the difference in levels of support between women and men, grew from 17 points in the spring to 30 points this month, the Harvard poll reported.
A longtime advocate for abortion rights, Harris appears to be benefiting from Americans’ overwhelming support for restoring the protections lost after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Abortion has been a motivating factor in elections the past two years and is likely to be so again, especially in states where abortion initiatives are on the ballot. The issue already has been at the center of the presidential campaign, with Trump taking credit for the Court’s ruling and Harris laying blame for the resulting abortion bans at his feet.
Democrats are motivated.
John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics
The Harvard poll shows that 59 percent of young voters want Congress to pass a law making abortion legal nationwide, something likely to occur only if Democrats win control of the Senate, the House and the White House.
Nowhere is Harris’s strength as great as it is among 18- to 29-year-old women, one group that would be most affected by new abortion laws restoring or further restricting access. The Harvard poll found that a full 70 percent of young women who are likely to vote support Harris, while just 23 percent back Trump. Harris leads among young men by 53 percent to Trump’s 36 percent.
Asked which candidate they trust more to deal with abortion, 56 percent of young women and 48 percent of young men said Harris, compared to 16 percent of women and 26 percent of men who said Trump.
Young voters also gave Harris significantly higher ratings than Trump on a number of personal attributes, including empathy, relatability, honesty and competence. They even ranked her higher on an issue that traditionally has benefited male candidates: strength.
The question now becomes whether a large segment of young voters will cast ballots. In 2018 and 2020, when Trump was in the White House, young people voted in record numbers. If the percentage of young voters declines this year, “it seems to me it’s a Republican issue,” Della Volpe said. “Democrats are motivated.”
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