Yale University Youth Poll release on Saturday shows Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman is the least liked 2028 Democratic hopeful among young voters.
The Spring 2025 Yale Youth Poll, which surveyed more than 2,000 self-identified registered voters aged 18 to 29, found that Fetterman’s net approval rating among this key voting block is -17.2 percent.
Fetterman has angered liberal Democrats with his staunch pro-Israel stance. He is also the only Democratic senator to travel to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Donald Trump at his home after the election and has since become the most pro-Trump Democrat in the Senate.
In the poll, Fetterman fared worse than ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith, whose net favorability among young Democrats is -16.9 percent
Both men were the only two potential candidates of the more than a dozen names floated to receive net negative favorability ratings.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) have the highest net favorability ratings among young Democrats of +60.
If the 2028 Democratic primary were held today, Democrats (and Democratic-leaning independents) would vote for former Vice President Kamala Harris (27.5%), Ocasio-Cortez (21.3%) and Pete Buttigieg (14%). No other Democrat received more than 5% of votes
Among young Democrats only, 37.4 percent say they would support Harris and 28.2 percent would back Ocasio-Cortez. 9.7 percent would back Buttigieg.
The Yale Youth Poll was conducted online between April 1 to April 3, pulling from a sample of 4,100 registered voters, of which 2,025 were under the age of 30. It has a margin of error of ± 1.9 percentage points for the full sample of 4,100 respondents and ±1.8 percentage points for those under 30.
