Education Didn’t Get Enough Airtime

The 2024 election may have been a polarizing one, but there’s at least one point of agreement between voters who backed Republican President Donald Trump and supporters of his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris: Neither candidate talked enough about education on the campaign trail.

Overall, 55 percent of voters feel they heard too little from both candidates about education, including 54 percent of Harris voters and 56 percent of Trump voters. That’s according to a poll released earlier this month by All4Ed, a policy and advocacy organization that promotes college and workforce readiness, particularly for students of color and students from low-income families.

The poll was conducted last fall, from Oct. 30 to Nov. 5, by Lake Research Partners, a Democratic polling organization, and the Tarrance Group, a Republican polling firm.

Thirty percent of voters overall thought the candidates talked about the subject “the right amount,” the poll found. And only 3 percent said they said they heard too much about the topic.

“Voters didn’t see education as playing a major role,” said Celinda Lake, president and CEO of Lake Research Partners.

That sentiment was bipartisan, agreed Brian Nienaber, a vice president at the Tarrance Group.

There “weren’t very many voters on either side who thought they heard enough about education, and almost nobody who thought they heard too much,” Nienaber said.

Men over 50, public school parents, and Latino men were particularly apt to say they didn’t hear enough about education in the presidential election, with at least 60 percent of each group agreeing that they heard too little about the topic.

More voters remember Harris talking about education as opposed to Trump, the poll revealed. Thirty-eight percent of respondents recalled hearing her address education during the campaign, compared to 26 percent who said the same of Trump. More than 1 in 5 voters—21 percent—could not remember either candidate talking about the issue.

The same poll also found that voters in both parties reject Trump’s pitch to abolish the U.S. Department of Education. It revealed that a majority of voters support increasing federal funding for education—but not if it means they must pay higher taxes.

And it found that support for work-based education and career-connected learning is a widely shared value across a broad swath of the electorate.