While most college students say they plan to vote this fall, they also lack confidence in the legitimacy of the 2020 election, a recent poll found.
The survey, released Monday by the Knight Foundation, details election concerns and voting preferences of Americans ages 18-24. Seven in 10 college students said they are "absolutely certain" they will vote in the general election, but they also pointed to concerns about how it will be conducted and fairness in the results.
Young people are a powerful, but often unreliable, voting bloc. In surveys, they are enthusiastic about participating in elections, but in reality, many find the voting process confusing or face barriers when trying to cast their ballot.
The November election "has not inspired an abundant feeling of confidence among college students," the poll found. Nearly half of those surveyed (49 percent) believe the election will not be conducted fairly, but even more (55 percent) think it won't be administered well.
The top issues that would lead young people to have major doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election are long lines or malfunctioning machinery at polling places (50 percent), foreign interference (48 percent), low voter turnout (46 percent) and the winner of the election losing the popular vote (46 percent).
College students also indicated they are disenchanted with the American political system. For instance, 81 percent think special interests have more influence over election outcomes than voters do. And less than two-fifths of young people believe the federal government works to improve the lives of people like them.
Most students agree that one way to improve elections is to do away with the Electoral College. More than two-thirds said they would prefer the president be elected by popular vote.
College students are evenly split on whether they think voting in the presidential election will be easy. More than six in 10 say they need more practical knowledge in order to become more politically involved. Previous polls have also shown young people often lack voting resources or guidance, especially when it comes to voting by mail.
A majority of students (53 percent) plan on casting their ballot by mail this fall, and 29 percent intend to vote in person on Election Day. Another 9 percent say they'll vote early and in person.
While two-thirds of the students surveyed said they would vote for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, neither Biden nor President Trump were viewed favorably by a majority of people.
The Knight Foundation surveyed 4,000 undergraduate students at four-year colleges or universities across the country between Aug. 9-12. The margin of error is 2 percentage points.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.