Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is seeing a huge surge in support among young voters in the race against Donald Trump which could provide a major boost for the Democratic ticket with less than three month to go before Election Day.
A new poll of Gen Z and millennial voters in battleground states found the vice president leading the ex-president 51 percent to 42 percent in a head-to-head matchup.
The poll sponsored by Don’t PAC Down, which surveyed voters ages 18 to 29 across eight crucial states, is a major shift from before President Biden dropped out of the race last month.
A hypothetical matchup between Harris and Trump in early July had Trump leading by four points 48 percent to 44 percent.
Including third party candidates, the polling now finds Harris at 42 percent and Trump at 33 percent among young voters with Independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. at 7 percent.
When the poll was conducted early last month, Trump had 32 percent, Biden had 31 percent and Kennedy had 15 percent, a significantly higher amount of support among young people before Democrats had a shake-up at the top of their ticket.
When it comes to Harris’ boost among young voters, she saw the greatest gains among 18 to 24-year-olds, women, black voters and college educated voters, the polling found.
Overall, 55 percent of voters ages 18 to 29 are much more or somewhat more enthusiastic since Biden exited the race and endorsed Harris including 77 percent of Democrats saying they are somewhat or much more enthusiastic.
Since early July, the vice president has also seen her favorability among young voters increase sixteen points according to the new data.
Harris’ favorability hit 49 percent this month among Gen Z and millennial voters while Trump’s favorability dipped slightly to 40 percent from early July.
The 59-year-old also leads Trump, 78, in nine of the twelve leadership attributes, which was a significant shift from July.
The surge in support for Harris comes as both campaigns have made strong plays for young voters over the past few weeks, especially online.
After Biden exited the race, the campaign saw its @KamalaHQ TikTok account’s number of followers double overnight from July 21 to July 22. It has also grown more than eight times since the change from @BidenHQ, making the TikTok account the most followed social asset, according to the campaign.
After Harris took over the top of the Democratic ticket, her campaign quickly surpassed Trump’s campaign in the number of video views from their campaign TikTok accounts.
Separately, the vast majority of top performing TikTok post mentioning Harris at the start of August were positive while the vast majority of the top performing videos mentioning Trump were negative, the analytics platform Zelf found.
Meanwhile, Trump has also made a push to meet young voters where they are. He joined Gen Z streamer Adin Ross earlier this month for the wide-ranging interview in his own appeal to young voters.
He also joined YouTuber Logan Paul for an episode of his podcast in June.
While Trump’s campaign has been surpassed in the number of TikTok video views by Harris, he continues to have more followers at more than 9.9 million, even has Harris posts more content.