Harris leading Trump among young voters: Survey

Vice President Harris is leading former President Trump by 16 points among young voters, according to new polling.

The survey, published Wednesday from NBC News and SurveyMonkey, shows 50 percent of young voters, ages 18-29, say they would vote for Harris if the 2024 election were held today. Around 34 percent say they would vote for Trump, 6 percent say they would choose someone else and 10 percent say they would not vote.

Slightly more than half (55 percent) say they are “almost certain” that they will vote, while 18 percent say they are “very likely” to vote in November. Fifteen percent say they are “somewhat” likely to vote, while a total of 12 percent say they are not very or not at all likely to vote in the upcoming election.

Harris’s 50-percent support comes in slightly lower than the 54 percent of respondents who say they are more likely to support Democrats over Republicans (31 percent) for down-ballot races.

The survey also comes as younger men have grown increasingly more conservative and less likely to back a Democrat than they were in the 2020 election.

While Harris’s lead remains strong, support among the key demographic remains lower than the 60 percent of young voters who backed President Biden in 2020, according to the poll.

Roughly 73 percent of respondents in the survey also say they support setting a maximum age limit for presidential candidates, while only 27 percent say they would oppose it. The numbers come just over a month after Biden, 81, dropped out of the race and endorsed his vice president to lead the Democratic ticket.

The president's decision to suspend his campaign came after a large number of Democrats, concerned over his age and mental acuity, called on Biden to step aside following a disastrous debate performance earlier this year.

The NBC/SurveyMonkey survey was conducted online between Aug. 23-30 and includes 2,617 registered voters 18-29 years old. The margin of error is 3.1 percentage points.