Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Yeshiva U. Students Back Donald Trump in Poll — Women Even More Than Men

Donald Trump has struggled with low poll numbers among college students and among women.

But a new survey from Yeshiva University’s student newspaper suggests that at least one type of student prefers Trump: Orthodox Jews, and particularly Orthodox Jewish women.

According to a survey of 300 Yeshiva University students published September 18 by student paper The Commentator, 37% prefer Trump, while 27% back Hillary Clinton. Another 17% said they were undecided.

Among female students, the paper’s reported results were more striking: 45% of the female students surveyed backed Trump, compared to 35% who back Clinton.

That’s in sharp contrast to Trump’s national and New York polls, where he’s trailed significantly among young people and women.

More that 2,000 students attend YU’s three undergraduate colleges in Manhattan — the all-male Yeshiva College, the all-female Stern College, and the Sy Syms School of Business. The vast majority of the school’s undergraduate students are Orthodox Jews.

It’s difficult to know how much to make of The Commentator’s results, as the student paper offers scant details on its methodology in a post about the survey. Students were polled between September 8 and September 11; only 76 of the 300 participants were women, raising the likelihood of a large margin of error.

If legitimate, however, the results are quite different from other surveys of young female voters. As of September 8, Clinton lead Trump nationally among women by 17%, and among 18-39 year olds by 20%, according to the Washington Post. In New York State, the gap is even broader: An Emerson College poll in August found that Clinton led by 33% among female likely voters.

Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.