Education

Students At Major University Prefer Trump Over Harris, Poll Shows

Steven Van Elk/Unsplash

Former President Donald Trump has an edge over Vice President Kamala Harris among students at Notre Dame heading into November, a poll released Wednesday shows.

The poll, conducted by the Irish Rover from Sept. 15 to Sept. 18, found that 47.6% of students prefer Trump, while 45.9% favor Harris, marking the first time in 12 years Notre Dame students have favored a republican candidate. The majority of students stated that they disapprove of the job the current administration is doing, and only 5% of students surveyed strongly approved of Biden.

“It is amazing to see a college campus stand by President Trump,” Elliot Anderson, College Republicans President, told the Irish Rover. “We hope that the trend of ultra-liberal colleges is finally coming to an end with the increasing youth support for conservative policies.”

Students who are Catholic prefer Trump over Harris, 56% to 36%, the poll shows. The percentage of Catholic men that favor Trump is 63% and 50% of Catholic women prefer Harris.

The Wednesday poll shows a shift in student voters favoring the republican candidate, after 66% of students had preferred Joe Biden in a 2020 poll conducted by the university’s student government and NDVotes, the Irish Rover reported.

“The student body is closely divided,” Professor David Campbell, Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy and Director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative, told the Irish Rover. “As we head into the home stretch of this hotly contested presidential election, I hope that the students of Notre Dame can demonstrate to the country that it is possible to disagree politically, but do so agreeably.”

Male students prefer Trump by a margin of 57% to 35%, while female students favor Harris 57% to 38%, the poll shows. The margin of error for the survey was 3.8% with a 95% confidence level, the Irish Rover reported. Out of 705 students surveyed, 49% were female and 51% were male.

Former president Trump currently has a lead over Harris in the sunbelt states as of Monday, pulling ahead by 5 points, according to a NYT/Siena poll. Trump leads Harris among likely voters 50% to 45%, and keeps his four-point lead in Georgia and two-point lead in North Carolina.

Notre Dame did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Steven Van Elk/Unsplash)