Staff Reports
A recent poll from the University of Notre Dame has turned heads, revealing that former President Donald Trump is leading Vice President Kamala Harris among likely student voters as the 2024 election gears up. This Irish Rover survey, conducted with 705 students, shows Trump with a slight edge at 47.6 percent compared to Harris’s 45.9 percent. Who would have thought Notre Dame would be bustling with young Republicans?
This year’s poll illustrates a dramatic shift in the political landscape at a university with deep Catholic roots and a history of balanced political sentiment. In a time when polarization seems to reign supreme, the findings indicate that students at Notre Dame may have had enough of the Biden-Harris bus tour, favoring Trump’s leadership by a narrow but significant margin. After all, a dead heat is still a win for conservatives on a college campus that typically leans left.
Notre Dame students prefer Trump to Kamala… first time they’ve preferred a Republican in a longtime. pic.twitter.com/6H6nqCQo4l
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) September 25, 2024
Even more remarkable is that this marks the first time in twelve years that students at Notre Dame have chosen the Republican nominee over the Democrat. Just look back at the previous election cycles—the statistics are eye-popping. In 2020, Joe Biden managed to snag a whopping 66 percent of the student vote, while Trump limped away with merely 29 percent. And who could forget 2016 when Hillary Clinton drubbed Trump 59 percent to 24 percent? The times, however, they are a-changin’, and Notre Dame students are apparently tuning into a different frequency.
The situation appears grim for the left, as Trump’s support emerges amid growing disappointment in the Biden-Harris administration. A staggering 65 percent of surveyed students expressed disapproval of the current leadership, with only 35 percent willing to offer weak kudos. The numbers reveal more than just political preferences; they show a generation increasingly frustrated with economic struggles and a desire for new direction. It seems the reality of student debt and rising living costs is starting to weigh heavily on the minds of this normally complacent demographic.
There’s also an interesting gender divide at play among the Catholic student body. Catholic men are rallying around Trump with a commanding 63-28 percent margin, while Catholic women are more divided, ever so slightly leaning toward Harris at 50-46 percent. Among non-Catholics, however, Harris reigns supreme—40 percent strongly disapproval of Biden does not seem to concern the non-Catholic student base. But does Harris’s support from mostly agnostic or atheist individuals signal that she is out of touch with the wider concerns of the economic frustrations affecting her younger base? It certainly raises questions as Election Day looms.
As both candidates rev up their campaigns, student voters remain a hotly contested demographic, and their unpredictable voting patterns could swing the tide in this crucial election. With Trump’s promise to revive the economy and bolster national security resonating with a disenchanted youth, it’s safe to say that Harris will have her work cut out for her, especially on a campus that seems to be stepping away from its ultra-liberal past. The question begs to be asked—could this be the start of a new tradition at Notre Dame?
