Kamala Harris is pulling ahead of Donald Trump among younger voters on nearly every major issue, according to recent polling data shared with Newsweek.
The poll, conducted by The Independent Center between October 18 and 22 among 1,200 likely voters aged 18 to 44, shows that Harris leads Trump on seven key issues, including the economy, healthcare, and social issues. The only issue where Trump has the lead is immigration.
Harris’ biggest lead was over Trump is on healthcare, where she leads him by 16 points, on 49 percent to his 33 percent. Nineteen percent of voters said they would trust a politician more who works with both sides of the aisle.
Healthcare has not featured prominently throughout the campaign. In a Fox News poll conducted between October 11 and 14, only 8 percent of voters, including 8 percent of people under 45, said it was the most important issue in deciding their vote.
According to a report by the Congressional Budget Office from June 2024, the uninsured share of the population will rise over the course of the next decade, largely as a result of the end of COVID-19 pandemic–related Medicaid policies, with the largest increase in the uninsured population expected to be among adults ages 19–44.
However, both campaigns have been vague about their plans for Medicaid, with the Harris campaign committing only to using tax credits to bring down premiums on plans offered through the Affordable Care Act, while Trump has steered clear of discussing the act.
Other issues where Harris performed well were the environment, where she has a 13-point lead, and education, where she leads by 12 points. On the economy, international issues, and political polarization, she leads by between 1 and 7 points.
However, although Harris only leads by a small margin on these issues, the polls marks a departure from national surveys, which have largely shown that voters trust Trump more on economic and foreign policy issues. Nonetheless, Harris’ lead on the economy is good news for the vice president’s campaign, after polls have shown that it is the most important issue to young voters.
Meanwhile, on social issues, which includes reproductive rights, crime, equality, and civil liberties, Harris has a 12 percent lead, with 47 percent of young voters trusting her more, compared to 35 percent who chose Trump.
Abortion has been a key issue for the Democrats in this campaign, particularly among female voters. Throughout the campaign, Harris has positioned herself as a staunch advocate for reproductive rights, leading the Democratic Party’s efforts on the issue, and launching a nationwide campaign for reproductive freedoms earlier this year.
In contrast, Trump has struggled to shake of his association with the repeal of Roe vs. Wade by the Supreme Court in 2022 after appointing three conservative justices to the court during his term. He has also supported abortion rights being left to the states and has not said whether he would veto a national abortion ban.
But there is one issue where younger voters trust Trump more than Harris, the poll shows. On immigration, which has been the cornerstone of Trump’s campaign, the former president has a 1-point lead over Harris, with 42 percent to her 41 percent.
Seventeen percent of 18-44 year olds said they would trust a politician more who works with both sides of the aisle on immigration. The poll had a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.
Other polls have also found that young people trust Trump more on immigration than Harris, but only marginally. For example, a poll by YouGov and The Economist conducted between October 19 and 22 found that the former president had a 1-point lead over Harris on immigration among 18-29 year-olds, while his lead increased to 4 points among 30-44 year-olds.
According to the Fox News poll, Trump had a 17 point lead over Harris on immigration among 18-44 year-olds.
Newsweek has contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment via email.
“Like other Americans, younger voters are being inundated with advertising about the situation at the border, blaming Kamala Harris and the Biden administration for record numbers of illegal crossings and also, frankly, demagoguing the issue in their speeches by saying that Harris is to blame for crime committed by undocumented immigrants and, of course, saying hateful things about immigrants in the country who are here legally,” Melissa Deckman, Public Religion Research Institute CEO and author of The Politics of Generation Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy, told Newsweek.
“Some data show, too, that the Trump campaign is running a lot of these ads in spaces, such as YouTube, where younger voters, particularly young men, are more likely to follow
Both candidates have sought to appeal to younger voters throughout this election through alternative media channels like podcasts that are shared on YouTube. Trump has appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, the Shawn Ryan Show, as well as Theo Von’s podcast and Lex Fridman’s. All four podcasts draw a largely young, male audience—a demographic that Trump is leaning into in order to gain support.
“The big divide in this cycle is less age and more gender. There is no question that younger men are becoming more conservative; that has been the case for a while now,” Tory Gavito, president of Way to Win, a progressive electoral organization, told Newsweek.
One of Trump’s key promises if reelected is to mount the largest domestic deportation in U.S. history. He made similar promises when he first ran for office in 2016, but during his administration, deportations never topped 350,000. For comparison, then-President Barack Obama carried out 432,000 deportations in 2013, the highest annual total since records were kept.
Trump has also said he will use the National Guard to round up migrants, and said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that allows the president to deport any noncitizen from a country that the U.S. is at war with.
“Because the border has become the defining issue for the MAGA movement, it will likely be more salient for young men who are drifting over to MAGA,” Gavito said.
But according to Gavito, in reality, Trump’s mass deportation scheme and his demonization of migrants may not actually appeal to young voters as much as polling would have us believe, and this is something he said that Harris’ campaign needs to recognize in order to win in November.
“First, she has to clearly articulate how she will fix our broken immigration system,” Gavito said of Harris. “That polls higher with young people overall than Trump’s demonizing of immigrants and his border saber rattling.
“We have to tell the story of what mass deportation actually entails, we did a lot of original research on this. Most people have no idea what mass deportation is but when they get the details, in a clear narrative of why Trump is doing this it moves them to support Kamala,” he added.
But Deckman believes that it is the economy, not immigration that is most salient to young men. “For young men voters, the predominant concern is not immigration, but the economy,” she said. In the Fox News poll, 44 percent of under 45 year olds said the economy was the most important issue to them.
Meanwhile, polls have shown that immigration is not a particularly pertinent issue to under 45 year olds. The YouGov/Economist poll found that immigration was the most important issue to 5 percent of 18-29 year-olds and 8 percent of 30-44 year-olds. The Fox News poll found that immigration was most important to only 12 percent of under 45 year-olds.
However, Deckman noted the gender divide when it comes to young voters, adding that while the economy may be the most important issue for young men, there is another issue that young women care about more.
“Young women care about the economy, certainly, but they are more motivated to vote based on abortion rights and other social issues,” she said.
Earlier this month, Harris appeared on the popular Call Her Daddy podcast to discuss discussed the current state of abortion access in America. About 90 percent of the show’s listeners are women, Facts.net reported.
“One out of three women in our country are in states with abortion bans,” she stated and described the challenges faced by women in these states, particularly mothers.
Harris added: “Imagine she is in a state with an abortion ban and she’s a mom. So she is going to have to figure out one, God help her if she has affordable childcare, God help her if she has paid leave, and then she is going to have to go to the airport, stand in a TSA line, sit on a plane next to a perfect stranger, to go to a city where she has never been, to receive the care she needs.”
However, Harris’ comments did not exactly go down well. Podcast host Alex Cooper lost thousands of followers after the interview, with some listeners accusing Cooper of peddling propaganda for the Democratic Party, and a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey conducted after the podcast finding that 51 percent of independents polled said Harris’ appearance on Call Her Daddy, along with her other media appearances, hurt her.
Polls have suggested that abortion may not be at the issue that wins young voters over this election. The October Fox News poll found that abortion was only the most important issue to 13 percent of under 45 year-olds, while a Harris X poll conducted between October 9 and 11 found that abortion was the most important issue for 22 percent of 18-34 year-olds and 15 percent of 35-49 year-olds.
Nonetheless, the election is so close, that it will ultimately come down to how motivated young people are to vote on the issues they care most about, according to Gavito.
“The big question here is who will turn out to vote in 2024, young women or young men. In 2022, women were incredibly motivated to vote on Reproductive issues,” Gavito said.
“It remains to be seen if the young men who are more aligned with a MAGA worldview will turn out at similar or higher levels around the border compared to young women driven to the polls by reproductive rights.”
“Young people always turn out and vote, they did in record numbers in 2020. They will likely again this year. The real question is given this gender divide, it’s not yet clear exactly how they will break. It could very well decide this election,” he added.
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