A whopping 94% of American college students had heard of Charlie Kirk before the time of his death, but only 30% of students said they agreed with his views.
As the founder of Turning Point USA, Kirk portrayed himself as a key influencer on college campus where he staged “debates” in which he challenged students to ask him anything. His message always followed a politically conservative line. Kirk was hailed by the Trump campaign as a key reason Donald Trump was elected president in 2024.
Puck News reported the data gathered by Generation Lab, a research company specializing in charting the opinions of youth and young adults. The polling was conducted two days after Kirk’s Sept. 10 assassination in Utah.
The results were reported by Peter Hamby, who also is host of a podcast called “The Powers that Be.”
Hamby had reported on and conversed with Kirk throughout the 2024 campaign. Thus, he had a close bead on the influencer’s influence.
“Even though Kirk had a massive online following and powerful friends in the White House, it needs to be said that even among college students, Kirk was not popular at all,” he wrote. “Yes, it was a spectacle if he arrived on your campus, a bonanza of lib-owning and rhetorical combat all recorded for YouTube posterity. But the majority of students on those campuses stayed away.”
While almost all students polled said they knew of Kirk, 70% said they either “strongly disagree” or “somewhat disagree” with Kirk’s views. Only 30 percent said they agreed.
“This result undercuts some of Trump’s mythmaking about Kirk and young voters,” Hamby explained. “Trump often claims to have won Gen Z voters in the 2024 election, which is not true. While Trump narrowly won young men, thanks in part to Kirk’s hard work, young voters overall broke for Kamala Harris. The poll also found that white students were more likely to agree with Kirk’s views than Black or Latino students. And it uncovered that students at two-year colleges were more likely to agree with Kirk than students at four-year colleges or universities. Young men were also 10 points more likely to agree with Kirk than young women.”
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