Nearly half of Gen Z voters in the United States, the youngest voting demographic, have lied about who they supported in the presidential election, according to a recent survey.
A report released Wednesday on the latest Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll found that 48% of voters aged 18-27 admitted to lying to people about who they voted for, with Gen Zers being the generation most likely to admit this.
Millennials, the term referring to voters between the ages of 28-43, were the second-most likely to say they lied to people about who they voted for. Thirty-eight percent of millennials told Axios and Harris that they did so. By contrast, 17% of Gen Xers and 6% of baby boomers and older said the same.
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Overall, 23% of respondents said they lied to someone about who they voted for, while 58% said that they considered who they voted for to be a private matter, and 22% said they were open to lying about who they voted for.
Researchers attributed this trend among young people to Gen Z voters being raised “during the hyper-polarized Trump era,” thus making them “the most sensitive to perceived pressure and judgment from friends or loved ones.”
“The findings raise big questions about the limits and future of polling, which relies on voters giving responses reflecting their real-life political behavior,” noted the publication.
The report drew from a survey of 2,129 U.S. adults conducted online Oct. 22-24, of whom 1,858 respondents were registered voters. The survey reports a margin of error of +/- 2.4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level for the overall sample and a margin of error of +/- 2.6 percentage points for the registered voter sample.
Reflecting the polarized political environment, Axios and Harris also found that 33% of respondents said they are not close to some family members due to “differing political beliefs.” This number includes 44% of Gen Z respondents and 47% of millennial respondents.
The survey comes less than a week before Americans go to the polls on Election Day to decide who will be the next president of the United States, with many having voted early, either in-person or via mail-in ballot.
Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump continually poll close to one another, with Harris beating Trump by 0.8 percentage points as of Thursday afternoon in an average of polls compiled by The Hill/Decision Desk HQ. On the other hand, the RealClearPolitics average of polls asking voters which candidate they prefer shows Trump beating Harris by 0.5 percentage points as of Thursday afternoon.
The RealClearPolitics “no toss-up” map, which predicts the outcome of the presidential election based on polling in individual states, shows Trump beating Harris by securing 287 electoral votes to his opponent’s 251.
