Democracy is the most important issue for HBS students, driving strong support for Kamala Harris.
Widespread interest in the U.S. presidential election has been apparent all semester, from students packing into Aldrich 112 for the first-ever HBS Student Bipartisan Policy Debate, to ECs finding increasingly tenuous reasons to bring guests to Prof. Bob White’s “Road To The White House” course (Senator Mitt Romney’s class visit reportedly skirted a fire code violation).
Still, beneath this general excitement and HBS’s heavy bias toward agreeableness lay simple questions – Who do our classmates support in the upcoming election? What issues do they care about most?
The short answer? Kamala Harris and democracy in the United States. But like any good case discussion, there’s much more to unpack than just the case facts.
Kamala, in a Landslide
Though recent national polling shows a dead heat between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in the upcoming election, Ms. Harris holds a commanding lead in the 2024 Harbus poll – the Vice President captured over 70 percent of respondents’ support compared to around 20 percent support for Mr. Trump.
The Vice President’s lead is driven in part by a wide gender split. Ms. Harris leads the former President by a massive margin of 93 percentage points among HBS women, making up for her more pedestrian lead among HBS men of 24 percentage points.
Mr. Trump has gained significant support in the HBS student body since the 2016 Presidential Election. In that year’s Harbus poll, he received only 3 percent support compared to a staggering 85 percent for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (Gary Johnson and Jill Stein received 10 percent and 2 percent support, respectively). 17 percent of 2024 poll respondents identified as Independent, and Ms. Harris outperformed Mr. Trump by 15 percentage points among this segment.
It’s (Not) the Economy, Stupid
Though polls of the national electorate have repeatedly found the economy to be the most important issue for voters, democracy does not apparently die in the darkness of the Aldrich basement, as more students at the “West Point of Capitalism” found democracy in the U.S. to be the most important issue at hand in this election.
Students most concerned about democracy and abortion favored Ms. Harris by a wide margin (90 and 74 percentage points, respectively). Mr. Trump held a narrow lead among students who care most about the economy. Federal budget deficit hawks favored the former president by 30 percent, despite Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) reports finding that Mr. Trump’s campaign plans would lead to a $7.75 trillion increase in the deficit through 2035 (compared to a $3.95 trillion increase under the Harris campaign’s plan).
Perhaps tellingly, students most concerned with the conflict in the Middle East were evenly split between Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris, with a meaningful portion favoring abstention or another candidate.
Leaders Who Make a Difference
Though our political preferences may be more one-sided than the U.S. population’s, it is clear that our student body of almost 2,000 individuals is not a monolith. Hopefully, this is obvious to all of us. Our case method helps to foster healthy and constructive debate, and our comments are held to a standard significantly higher than those featured in recent presidential debates.
Ultimately, though the election this year will come down to the preferences of a few select voters fortunate enough to live in a state with evenly divided political leanings, our fellow classmates (or at least our Baker Scholars) will undoubtedly shape the society that results.
The 2024 Harbus HBS Presidential Election Poll was conducted online from October 25th, 2024 through November 3rd, 2024. 149 students across the entire HBS student body responded.
Kevin Zhang (MBA ’25) grew up in the swing state of Michigan, where he developed an unrealistic expectation for campaign attention in U.S. Presidential elections. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 2018 with a degree in Business Administration. Prior to HBS, Kevin worked in consulting at Bain & Company in Chicago and at multiple failed start-ups in Los Angeles.
Mimi Sax (MBA ’25) graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018 with a BA in Economics and minors in Mathematics and Gender Studies. Prior to HBS, Mimi worked in strategy at the Gates Foundation in Seattle and in strategy consulting for EY-Parthenon in Boston.
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