While it is commonly assumed that young voters primarily support female candidates and candidates of color, a new poll from College Reaction has found that this is not necessarily the case.
The online survey of 1,052 college students, conducted by College Reaction between April 4 to April 8, found that 18.9 percent of respondents supported Joe Biden as their preferred candidate for the presidency, 15.1 percent preferred Bernie Sanders and 14.7 percent preferred Donald Trump.
Female candidates and candidates of color received less support from the surveyed students with 5.5 percent of respondents supporting Kamala Harris, 2.5 percent supporting Cory Booker, 1.6 percent supporting Amy Klobuchar and 1 percent supporting Kirsten Gillibrand as their preferred presidential candidate.
“For all the talk about young voters charting the course, their preferences line up pretty much with the older folks,” Nicholas Johnston, editor-in-chief of Axios, said. “So don’t look for them to propel some new candidate to the forefront (though they do trend very Dem).”
In another poll conducted by the Harvard Public Opinion Project, as election season approaches, young voters between 18 and 29 years old are experiencing just as much anxiety as they are joy.
When it comes to reviewing the tenure of President Trump, more than 68 percent of youths disapprove of his job performance, while 48 percent think that the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Around 41 percent of youths also feel that baby boomer elected officials don’t care about them.
“Generational conflict between young voters and Baby Boomers is brewing,” the poll report reads. “By wide margins, younger Americans do not believe that the Baby Boomer generation, especially elected officials within that cohort, ‘care about people like them.'”
A majority of youths also expressed concern over Trump’s handling of climate change, race relations, health care, tax reform, gun violence, and policies towards ISIS and North Korea, with more than 60 percent of respondents voting in disapproval in each category.
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