Young voters more likely to self-identify as liberal: Survey

Young voters are more likely to identify as liberal and are increasingly critical of President Trump’s job performance, new polling conducted by the Yale Youth Poll found.

Forty-six percent of voters younger than age 30 self-identified as liberal, the Monday poll shows. This marks an increase from spring polling, which found that 39.3 percent of voters younger than age 30 called themselves liberal.

Only 13 percent of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 22 years described themselves as moderates, the smallest of all surveyed groups. Eighteen percent aged 23-29 years said the same.

Still, the amount of respondents who identify as conservative is “substantial” among the same age groups, the poll found. Forty percent of those aged 18 to 22 years old and 38 percent of those 23 to 29 year olds identified as conservative, beating out those in the 30-34 and 35-44 age range.

Youth voters, however, overwhelmingly disapproved of Trump’s performance in Monday’s poll — a shift from earlier this year.

This spring, voters in the 18-21 age range slightly backed Trump’s performance, while those in the 22-29 age group narrowly disapproved of his job.

Monday’s poll found that 64 percent of voters aged 18-22 disapproved of Trump, while 66 percent of those aged 23-29 also cast doubt on his performance.

Looking to 2028, voters younger than age 34 forecast that Vice President Vance and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) would stand a chance in the 2028 presidential election.

Voters younger than age 30, however, were more likely to back New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary than Newsom and other possible candidates.

All age groups preferred Vance to win the Republican presidential primary. But a majority of Republicans would back Trump if he were able to run for a third term.

The top three issues for those polled under age 34 were the cost of living, democracy, and corruption. 

Younger voters were also more likely to hold antisemitic views than older voters, the poll found.

The Yale Youth Poll was conducted from Oct. 29 to Nov. 11 and sampled 3,426 registered voters, including 1,706 voters from ages 18 to 34. The survey was conducted in English and had a margin of error of 1.7 percentage points for the full sample and 2.4 percentage points for the youth sample.