Yale Youth Poll Highlights How Young Americans Are Thinking About Politics, AI, and Democracy

The Yale Youth Poll has released its spring 2026 results, focused on political attitudes, the November midterms, the 2028 presidential primaries, artificial intelligence, executive power, immigration enforcement, and antisemitic beliefs.

“I think this edition of the poll inspired a fascinating dialog, particularly the AI section,” said Jack Dozier, the poll’s director and a junior in the Political Science Department’s B.A./M.A. program.  “We are in a digital age where these technologies find their way into every corner of our lives. And at the same time, regulation of it and its associated data centers are not keeping pace.”

With the 2026 congressional midterm elections looming, Dozier said the poll’s findings on party preference and institutional trust have become more salient than in prior surveys.

“We’re seeing a 17‑point increase toward Democrats among women ages 30 to 34,” he said, adding that women ages 18 to 22 showed a similar shift over just a few months. “It does not feel that long ago, but our political climate has been adapting so much.”

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

• Large majorities of young people disapprove of President Donald Trump’s job performance, including 68% of voters aged 18 to 21 and 75% of voters 30 to 35.
• Democrats lead in voting intentions on a generic congressional ballot for the midterms, with a 2‑point advantage. But among young voters, the gap is much larger, with voters 18-22 favoring Democrats by 23 percentage points and voters 23-29 favoring Democrats by 30 points.
• The top issue among young voters was cost of living and affordability, followed by health care, democracy, corruption, and housing. Foreign policy, AI, and culture‑war issues like acceptance of LGBTQ+ people ranked far lower despite heavy media attention.
• Young adults use AI far more frequently than older voters, mainly for everyday tasks, work, or school. Despite high usage, skepticism is widespread. Only 26% believe AI’s benefits will outweigh its harms. Majorities oppose AI making decisions in military combat, health care, hiring, or public transit. And people are overconfident in spotting AI‑generated content, performing barely better than chance in tests.
• Majorities oppose expanded presidential powers, including unilateral military action, ignoring court rulings, and directing federal investigations of political opponents. In addition, only 38% say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents make them feel safer, and pluralities of voters under 35 favor eliminating ICE entirely.
• Young voters are more likely than older adults to agree with antisemitic statements and to hold negative views of Israel. While extreme conspiracy theories remain minority views, a notable share of voters — especially those under 30 — agree with statements portraying Israel as oppressive or excessively influential. The most broadly supported position across parties is: “Israel is a democracy and the safe haven of the Jewish people, but they have a moral obligation to ensure humanitarian treatment of Palestinian civilians.”

“I am constantly impressed by our students, who design these polls before analyzing, interpreting, and disseminating them,” said  Josh Kalla, an ISPS faculty fellow and advisor for the project. “They really are driving this effort, exploring pressing social and political questions, engaging with the existing academic research, and inspiring new questions to tackle.”

In addition, Kalla, a leader of the Democratic Innovations program, praised the students for their active partnership with the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, ensuring that recent polls measure antisemitic and anti-Israel views in the electorate.

Democratic Innovations identifies and tests new ideas for improving the quality of democratic representation and governance.

Given that the poll is authored entirely by a cohort of undergraduate students, Dozier said the project gains strength from the team’s proximity to the people it studies.

“Young voters are not this uniform group,” he said. “There are a lot of different factors in play.”

He described the polling team as uniquely positioned to ask questions shaped by shared experiences, from graduating into a difficult job market to coming of age during the COVID-19 pandemic. And he thanked ISPS for supporting their efforts.

“We are so grateful for this really unique opportunity to ask questions that we can understand from a first-hand perspective,” Dozier said. “Sometimes, we find results which mirror our views as individuals. But they can also show us perspectives we wouldn’t otherwise see in our day-to-day.”

The Yale Youth Poll will return with its next wave in the fall.