WASHINGTON — If the nation’s high school students had their way — including those who plan to vote this November — Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., would be the nation’s next president, a new survey released Thursday shows.
Specifically, among first-time voters in November, Sanders would garner 35 percent of the vote, followed by billionaire businessman Donald Trump (R), who would get 19 percent, then former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who would get 12 and 8 percent, respectively.
The survey — conducted by My College Options, a college-planning organization, and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation — shows that the election would take a very different course than the one it has taken based on the preferences of older voters, for whom Trump and Clinton are the favored White House contenders.
Facilitators of the survey — now in its third iteration after being used in the 2008 and 2012 elections — believe it offers profound insights into the thinking of America’s youngest voters.
“I look at this survey as providing us all with important guidance on how to better understand and serve our youth,” said Jose Antonio Tijerino, president and CEO of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, a Fairfax, Va.-based organization that works to prepare young Latinos for positions of leadership.
The survey found great divergence among students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds when it came to ranking the nation’s most important issues.
While all students agreed that the economy and education are the two most important issues, different groups had different views on which issue came next.
