With the divided state of our country, especially in this period of a closely contested election, many Americans turn to polls in hopes of getting answers as to how the states and nation as a whole will vote. While these polls can help shape a narrative, they have very little predicting power when it comes to elections. Political polls have different results and most forecast leads for candidates within the margin of error.
Polling for the 2024 election has been closely divided, with President Trump taking minor leads in Pennsylvania and the Sun Belt states of Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, while Wisconsin and Michigan remain a dead-heat. While polls do not always help us predict the outcome of elections, they can help analysts and voters alike in spotting which candidate has the momentum.
We at the Xavier Review thought it would be interesting to poll Xavier to see how the Xavier student body would vote on election day if they were of age. This poll is not in any way indicative of any electoral outcome as the vast majority of the student population is not old enough to cast a ballot, but the divide is interesting between support for the candidates.
According to the poll of 125 students, 54.4% expressed support for President Trump while 30.4% expressed support for Vice President Harris. A final count of 15.2% of respondents said they were undecided or preferred another candidate. With undecideds factored into a head-to-head race between the nominees of the major parties however, the results could be different.
The most interesting factor of this poll is that it lines up with data that has been coming out of polling firms across the country that indicates a rightward shift of young male voters towards the Republican Party and more specifically, President Trump. According to a recent New York Times survey, President Trump leads Vice President Harris by 11 points among men, with some indicators pointing to that divide being more pronounced among young men, while women tend to lean left. With Xavier being an all-boys high school, the data collected in our poll seems to match with the data that has come out from numerous reputable polling firms.
