Student-Run Yale Youth Poll Delivers New Insights on Policy and Generational Views

The Yale Youth Poll has published results from its fall survey, offering fresh insights into the attitudes and priorities of young voters nationwide.

Voters under 34 now overwhelmingly disapprove of President Donald Trump’s job performance, marking a sharp reversal from the poll’s results from last spring, when voters aged 18 to 21 narrowly approved of his performance and voters from 22 to 29 narrowly disapproved.

Other key findings of the third edition of the student-run poll, supported by the Institution for Social Policy Studies’ Democratic Innovations program, include:

• Messaging matters: In head-to-head testing of 48 statements about the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Democratic messaging garnered 53% favorability compared to 47% for Republican messaging.
• Gender-role views are egalitarian — with nuance: Voters generally support equal roles in relationships, though the youngest cohort (18–22) leans slightly more traditional.
• “Manosphere” influence limited: Young voters’ agreement with statements like “men have it worse than women” or that “traditional masculinity is under attack” mirrors broader electorate views, indicating no youth surge in these ideologies.
• No male loneliness epidemic: Men and women report similar numbers of close friends, sexual partners, and social support, with no ideological divides.
• Nuanced antisemitic attitudes: Young voters displayed higher rates of critical opinions toward Israel and U.S. military aid — and a higher (though not widespread) alignment with antisemitic stereotypes — highlighting complex, layered views.

Managed by undergraduate students, the 15-member Yale Youth Poll team handled all stages — from question design to data analysis — enhanced this year by dividing the team into research-driven groups aligned with academic literature.

“One of our goals this year was to approach the process in a more academic way,” said Jack Dozier, director of Yale Youth Poll. “In the first year we sat in a conference room and threw questions on a board. This year we looked at academic work, including sociology and political science, to see what questions have been asked, what should we build upon, and what’s new. We worked on making our lineup more consistent and adding to the conversation.”

Dozier, a junior in the Political Science Department’s B.A./M.A. program, took over as director of the poll this month from founder and graduating senior Milan Singh. Josh Kalla, an ISPS faculty fellow and a leader of the Democratic Innovations program, serves as an advisor for the project. Democratic Innovations identifies and tests new ideas for improving the quality of democratic representation and governance.

“Working on the poll is a unique and unrivaled experience,” Dozier said. “Our team draws people from every moment of their Yale journey — from first years, to alumni who graduated in December, and everywhere in-between. With time, we are so excited to have that variety of participants and continue to grow.”

Dozier found encouragement in the data on questions around anti-feminist and often misogynistic beliefs shared online.

“Younger people aren’t necessarily buying into what we call manosphere claims,” he said. “Maybe they have different voting tendencies than older Americans, but they are not necessarily subscribing to many of the more toxic issues we’ve seen promoted in the media.”

Singh expressed surprise in response to the data on loneliness.

“You might expect that maybe one party is lonelier than the other, perhaps Republicans because they tend to be lower socioeconomic status,” he said. “But maybe being more religious means people have a more of a built-in community than Democrats, who may tend to be more secular. It’s possible that these different cross-cutting patterns, more or less cancel each other out. But that was surprising to me.”

And he felt younger voters distinguished themselves with an emphasis on housing costs.

“Everyone is concerned about cost of living,” he said. “But young people are more concerned about specifically housing than older people are, at least based on this data.”

In the upcoming semester, the team will explore attitudes toward artificial intelligence, continue their research into antisemitism, and unveil a third thematic focus.

ISPS Director Alan Gerber, Sterling Professor of Political Science, praised the student pollsters for their entrepreneurial vision and execution.

“The Yale Youth Poll combines methodological rigor with experiential learning, empowering students to design, field, and analyze surveys on issues shaping democracy,” Gerber said. “ISPS and the Democratic Innovations Program are pleased to support students dedicated to mastering the logistics of conducting first-rate public opinion research. And to using these skills to learn important things about public attitudes and our society.”