Half of registered voters under 30 years old plan to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and one-third are lining up with former President Donald Trump — relatively unchanged from a previous survey in August, according to the new NBC News Stay Tuned Gen Z Poll, powered by SurveyMonkey.
And among young voters who say they will vote in the presidential election in November, Harris leads 56%-36%, a 20-point advantage. With some young voters leaning toward other candidates on the ballot besides Harris and Trump, that’s just shy of the 24-point margin President Joe Biden enjoyed among voters under 30 in 2020 (60%-36%), according to the NBC News exit poll.
Within Gen Z, though, there are notable splits between different groups — and the gender gap is particularly significant.
Young women said they’ll vote for Harris over Trump by a 33-point margin. Young men were essentially even, with Harris having a 2-point lead.
Men (46%) were more likely to say that Trump has the right temperament to serve as president compared with women (30%). Mirroring this, women (65%) were more likely to say that Harris has the right temperament compared with men (55%).
The gender differences splashed across the issues young voters say are most important to their vote. While inflation and the cost of living ranked as the most important issue among both men (35%) and women (29%), they differed on what came next, with 13% of women selecting abortion compared with 4% of men. Among men, 13% cited threats to democracy as their most important issue, compared with 9% of women who picked that issue.
There were also large gender differences on the role abortion policy will play in choosing a candidate. Just under half of young women (48%) said that they would only vote for a candidate who shared their view on abortion, compared with 36% of men.
Friends and family endorsements matter more than high-profile celebrities
While voters are getting bombarded by messages from politicians, political organizations and media organizations, 45% of young voters say they will pay the most attention to the opinions of family, friends and co-workers when deciding which candidate to support for president.
Roughly a third of young voters said they’ll pay attention to endorsements by political leaders (38%) and organizations to which they belong (31%).
Six in 10 Gen Z voters who said they plan to vote for Harris reported that if a friend planned to vote for Trump, it would put a strain on their relationship. On the other hand, only about a quarter of those who plan to vote for Trump said their friendship would be strained if a friend planned to vote for Harris.
In an era where celebrities and influencers can hold more sway than our elected officials, celebrity endorsements are thought to have the potential to change the course of a political campaign. Arguably the most high-profile endorsements of the 2024 cycle have come from pop superstar Taylor Swift, backing Harris, and tech billionaire Elon Musk, backing Trump.
Just 11% of Gen Z voters said that Swift’s endorsement makes them more likely to vote for Harris, while 17% said that Elon Musk’s endorsement makes them more likely to vote for Trump.
Indeed, this data suggests the possibility of some backfire in these endorsements. On Swift, 19% of young voters said her endorsement makes them less likely to vote for Harris, and 29% of voters said Musk’s endorsement makes them less likely to vote for Trump.
Still, only 8% of voters surveyed said they’ll pay attention to celebrities as a potential source of information when deciding for whom to vote.
Negative views of the economy and direction of the country
Just 19% of young voters say that the economy in the country today is better than it was a year ago, compared with 57% who say that it is worse.
Young voters are slightly more positive — and more closely divided — about their own finances, with 30% saying they are personally better off than they were a year ago compared with 37% who say they are worse off.
Pessimism about the economy is also reflected in views about the country overall.
Just 22% of young voters said that the country is on the right track — down 10 points from the August NBC News Stay Tuned Gen Z Poll. Similarly, 77% said the country is headed in the wrong direction — up 10 points from August.
Views of vice presidential candidates down slightly
Half of young voters have a positive view of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, including 23% who rated him as an excellent VP pick. Another 27% have a negative view of him.
One-third of young voters have a positive view of Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance, and 45% have a negative view of him.
Negative views of both vice presidential picks overall increased slightly from August’s poll, which was conducted following the Democratic National Convention — and well before Walz and Vance met in their early October debate.
This NBC News Stay Tuned Gen Z poll was powered by SurveyMonkey, the fast, intuitive feedback management platform where 20 million questions are answered daily. It was conducted online Oct. 10-21 among a national sample of 2,119 registered voters 18-29 years old. The data was weighted to population totals among 18- to 29-year-olds for sex, race, census region (all from the American Community Survey), and partisanship (from the Cooperative Election Study). The estimated margin of error for this survey is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Sampling error associated with subgroup results is higher.
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