Singh and Dozier expressed their gratitude to ISPS Director Alan Gerber, Sterling Professor of Political Science, and ISPS faculty fellow Josh Kalla, who serves as an advisor for the project.
“What is impressive about this operation is that it is all genuinely student-run,” Kalla said. “They select and then program the survey questions, coordinate with the university’s procurement department to pay vendors, gather the data, analyze the data, write it up, and work with journalists to raise awareness of the results. What they are doing is a fulltime job for most people, and they are still doing their coursework.”
Over the summer, the growing team of students in the organization hope to roll out a series of short on-the-street polls to spot-test knowledge and public opinion to better understand the youth demographic over a diverse geographic span and provide inspiration for next school year’s polls.
“Young voters are increasingly a larger share of the electorate,” Singh said. “The hope is that people can make better decisions with more accurate information. And we can help open up a conversation, maybe encourage others to go out there and dig deeper, ask different questions.”
Kalla said the findings about the divide within Gen-Z on political views has already gotten other scholars and journalists interested in the topic. And learning more about younger voters can perhaps overturn assumptions campaign operatives often make.
“Given the closeness of American politics, these small shifts in voting behavior and opinion have important implications for who wins elections and how elections are run,” Kalla said. “Young people are often under-studied and under-surveyed in American politics. The research these students are doing helps spark these important conversations.”
Gerber praised the students for their work ethic and the design choice to focus on young voters.
“The students in this Democratic Innovations-supported organization ensured a large enough sample of younger voters to accomplish the subgroup analysis and thereby improve our general understanding of some of these nuances,” Gerber said. “Not only are these students adding to our knowledge of the electorate, but this hands-on experience in designing and analyzing survey data will help them become more intelligent citizen consumers of polls.”
To share your ideas for questions to include in the next youth poll, send an email to YaleYouthPoll@gmail.com.
