John Della Volpe presents the Harvard Youth Poll’s 2025 findings, revealing just 30% of 18- to 29-year-olds expect financial gains over their parents, with AI feared by 59% as a career threat. Optimism about the U.S.’s future hit 13%, worse than the Great Recession, while Trump’s approval among young voters rose to 29% in 2024—though Democrats still lead (46% vs. 29%). The poll, now 25 years old with 2,000+ interviews/semester, suggests liberal arts education and national service could bridge divides, yet economic stress persists, leaving a generation barely surviving amid institutional distrust. [Automatically generated summary]
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And we welcome back now Harvard Institute of Politics polling director John DeLaVolpe.
He's out with the latest edition of the Harvard Youth Poll.
The survey dates back to the year 2000.
Mr. De La Volpe, what did you find out about the hopes, the fears of American 18 to 29 year olds in the year 2025?
unidentified
Thanks again, John, for having me back.
This is a survey where perhaps last time we had a conversation about this.
I talked about that this generation, mostly Gen Zs, what we're talking about, 18 to 29 year olds, were worried about their near-term and longer term future, mostly connected to the economy.
But I think today, the story from this poll is the worry has now turned into concerns about their own economic situation,
deep concerns about the instability of the job market based upon technology and AI, and deep concerns about the institutions designed and developed to protect and to guide them.
So this is a generation that's feeling just deep levels of instability at this moment.
This is from the latest edition, again, of the Harvard Youth Poll that you can find online at the Harvard Institute of Politics.
Only 30% of those 18 to 29-year-olds believe that they'll be better off financially than their parents, with college students at 34%, graduates at 35%, slightly more optimistic than those not in college and without a college degree.
Just 28% of those folks believe that they'll be better off financially than their parents.
And John DeLavolpe, some history of this poll for folks who don't know much about it.
It goes back to the year 2000.
It happens about twice a year at this point.
What was the original point of doing this poll?
And did you expect it to be going on for 25 years?
unidentified
No, this is one of my favorite stories about what makes Institute of Politics here so special.
This was never my idea.
It was the idea of two sophomores, Aaron and Trevor, who looked at our campus back in the spring, winter spring of 2000, who looked at our campus and noticed that there wasn't a lot of robust political conversations.
Same thing happening, they felt on other campuses across the country, but it seemed like their peers were deeply committed to community service and volunteering.
And the question that they brought to the leadership of the Institute of Politics at Harvard at that time was, can we try to understand this disconnect?
Can we try to understand why so many young people seem committed to community service, but not as engaged as voting and kind of political debate and conversations as we might expect?
This, of course, was following the 1996 presidential election where only roughly a third of people under the ages of 30 participated.
So this was designed to be kind of a one semester project.
And as you noted, it's about 50 semesters ago, 25 years.
And what also makes this unique is this is the longest running, largest survey of young voters, but it's also true collaboration between, at this point, several dozen undergraduates here at the college with me and my colleagues.
And together, we kind of develop the questions, we conduct the interviews with outside partners and report, of course, on the findings.
It's a really unique combination of undergraduate enthusiasm and curiosity with, of course, the rigor that is necessary to conduct survey research today.
And as we've had just a few hits to the technology side here, I want to make sure that we can continue to hear you and have this conversation with you.
So I'm going to work on that connection with you as I promote the phone lines.
We especially want 18 to 29 year olds to call in this morning.
That number, if you're 18 to 29 years old, 202-748-8000 is the number to call.
If you are 30 to 50 years older, 202-748-8001.
If you're over 50, here's the number to call, 202-748-8002.
It's the Harvard youth poll.
And you can find it at IOP, Institute of Polling, at Harvard, Institute of Politics, at Harvard.edu.
And you can find that poll online, iOP.harvard.edu.
John DeLaVolpe, let's run through a few more numbers on the poll on the technology side.
AI, an issue that very much is on the front of mind of kids today and young people today.
What did you find?
unidentified
Well, we found by a margin of roughly three to one that younger people across political affiliation, across demographic, socio-economic status, are concerned that AI will take away, not create opportunities for them in the future.
And more importantly, I think, and creating a lot of this anxiety, is that over half, 59%, say that AI will have a negative impact on their career prospects.
And again, that's something that I think most young Americans agree with, again, regardless of their education or their economic status at this point.
How long have you been polling about the coming of AI?
And is it getting more trepidation among young people or are they becoming more comfortable with it?
What is the sort of trend line here say?
unidentified
We don't have, John, we don't have a lot of trend line on this particular series of questions.
But what I will note is that we did see that, you know, that a significant number of people are using AI on a regular basis for school assignments, for work assignments, et cetera.
But as it's concerned about kind of their future, they just have more questions than answers.
And that is one, I think, of the reasons that there's so much concern and this feeling of being unstable today, because you already have issues related to inflation.
You have issues related to the job market.
We see unemployment rising as of this morning.
That is only those concerns are only exacerbated now with questions around AI.
And the concern that I have is they're looking to governments to provide some pathways, some guardrails.
And again, they just don't hear that government is actually kind of on their side on this issue, which creates more economic stress and more mental health stress, to be honest.
On trend lines and young people, one of the questions that you've been asking for a long time is whether young people think the country is on the right track or headed off in the wrong direction.
In this latest poll, just 13% of young people said that the country is generally headed on the right track.
Where does that stand historically in this poll?
unidentified
That stands at close to the lowest number, but when you look at the ratio between the right track versus wrong direction, that ratio, we also, in this particular survey, I'll throw up a kind of a third option in terms of really not sure.
But when you look at the right track versus the wrong track, this is as negative a perception that younger Americans have had in the last 20-something years.
In fact, it is darker and more negative than it was actually during the depths of the Great Recession when, as you noted, we were asking that question as well.
So just, again, deep concern, instability economically, instability related to kind of the status of kind of Democratic institutions, and sadly, instability even around important personal relationships.
Those are the big three findings, I think, in the survey.
What are young people saying about 2026, a midterm election year?
What can the folks who work up here on Capitol Hill, what should they be paying attention to from this survey?
unidentified
Well, I think one of the good things, despite kind of, as I said, the instability, people aren't giving up.
I wouldn't say that they're apathetic.
We see roughly the same number, never enough as far as I'm concerned, roughly the same number of young people saying they're likely to participate and vote in 2026.
Again, always want that to be higher.
But whereas both political parties are viewed far more negatively than positively, approval ratings of Democrats in Congress, Republicans in Congress are under 30%.
Despite that, we see Democrats with a significant advantage at this point relative to Republicans a year out from 11 months now from the midterms.
We see that among young registered voters, 46% say they prefer Democrats' control of Congress.
29% indicate the same for Republicans.
And Democrats have a double-digit lead when we dig into the crosstops across most subgroups.
Single digits, when you look at younger white voters and you look at younger voters who are not on a college campus and don't have a college degree.
But overall, relative to Republicans, Democrats are In good shape, although there are clearly concerns that younger people have with the Democratic Party kind of brand and image right now, as we also delved into in the survey.
Donald Trump is not on the ballot in 2026, but what did your poll tell you about young people and their views on Donald Trump?
unidentified
So Donald Trump, you know, in 2024 did what many people would say surprisingly well with younger voters.
He did far better in 2024 than he did in 2020.
In 2020, Joe Biden received 60% of the youth vote, and Kamala Harris in 2024 received roughly 55%.
And that was because of a double-digit shift over the course of four years among younger men in particular.
Some young women moved, but it was mostly younger men.
Even though many young Americans didn't necessarily kind of agree with Donald Trump on a lot of issues, but there was a significant number of people, even in January, on the eve of his inauguration, who indicated that he might help improve their personal economic situation.
That's the lens in which younger people were viewing, I think, kind of Donald Trump.
You fast forward 10, 11 months into the administration, and you can see that only 29% approve of his job overall.
And whether that is overall and whether that is on the economy, on inflation, on immigration, on healthcare, his approval rating doesn't increase much more than 32, 34% on any one issue.
The phone numbers, again, for you to call in if you are between 18 to 29, and that's who was targeted in this Harvard youth poll.
It's 202-748-8000.
If you're 30 to 50 years old, 202-748-8001.
If you're over 50, 202-748-8002.
John DeLaVolpe, our guest via Zoom for about the next 20 minutes to take your calls.
First question from Text Message, or this actually is from X. America Inc. is the handle asking you in light of what you found when it came to youth views on AI, what fields do you believe that youth should be focusing on in light of what we find out about AI?
unidentified
Well, I spent a lot of time with younger people, not just through surveys, not just on this campus, but also conducting focus groups and traveling to other places around the country.
And what I think is the ability to be essentially kind of well-read.
And I think that a kind of return to that traditional liberal arts education is something that I think will help more young people understand how to get the most out of AI.
I spend a lot of time myself using these tools.
And I think it is kind of the experience of asking and directing AI in terms of what the task is.
And that is something that comes with kind of experience and understanding kind of a broad set of knowledge across multiple fields to really kind of understand and get the most of this technology.
So I hear a lot about that in my focus groups.
I see a lot of younger people spending time online, on YouTube, and other places to try to understand kind of more context about the issues that they care about so they can get the most out of AI and AI prompts.
Can you actually just briefly do the methodology for the Harvard Youth Poll?
unidentified
Of course.
So the Harvard Youth Poll is a quantitative survey.
Every semester, twice a year, as you said, we conduct well more than 2,000 interviews.
We conduct them mostly in English.
If folks are interested in more comfortable in Spanish, we offer a Spanish, a translated version as well.
We recruit people.
This is what we would call a probability-based sample, which means that every young individual under the age between the ages of 18 and 29 has an equal chance of being selected for the survey.
The way in which we recruit them isn't based upon a telephone number or an internet address like we might have in the past.
This is based upon an address-based sample.
So we recruit people actually based upon kind of where they live rather than, you know, when I started this in this field decades ago now, based upon telephone exchanges.
So that is the way in which we do this.
The students and I kind of develop the questions and we use an organization called Ipsos and their knowledge panel to actually collect the information.
And then over the course of the last several weeks of the semester, students and I break up into research teams and we analyze and of course kind of report the results.
Bill is on the phone from Jacksonville, Florida, on that line for folks who are over the age of 50.
Bill, you don't have to give your exact age, but go ahead with your question for John DeLa Volpe.
unidentified
Don't mind telling, I'm 82, so I've been through a few of the generational changes here.
And to Mr. Volvitas, my question is that one thing when I was growing up, we had the draft, and that certainly had minds focused on what to look for, and that gave us an extra couple years to maybe find things and to be perhaps more successful.
Along with that, I was wondering in your survey, you said things aren't getting better.
What about things possibly being worse type thing?
And then I'll pose on a third point.
One difficulty we have is that we've ensured with government regulations and welfare stuff not going into poverty as much as opposed to the old days.
Like my dad grew up, he was born in 1912.
There was that safety net, so you really had to scramble to be successful.
Just your thoughts on that, please.
Yeah.
I think a couple of things.
I think when you spoke first about the draft bill, this is something that community service, national service, looking for an opportunity to kind of connect with each other.
This is a big idea.
Not necessarily only the military, but I think a call to national service is an important step in moving this generation and this country forward, which is something that Bill talked about.
You know, essentially, kind of every three decades, we see a focus from the White House, FDR, JFK, and Bill Clinton kind of engaging in national service and public service.
And I'm hopeful that we see leadership in the next couple of years to encourage more young people to participate.
I do think as we started this conversation, John mentioned that only 30% of young Americans think they'll be better off than their parents.
Close to 50%, over 40%, indicate that they are barely getting we're going to leave this to take you live to the White House for a Hanukkah reception with President Trump.