A new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) finds that likely voters who own cryptocurrencies—about one out of every seven registered voters—favor former President Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election by 12 points. These results come as Trump and new ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have recently doubled down on support for crypto.
“Trump has been reaching out to the crypto community, and it seems to have paid off,” wrote Dan Cassino, professor of government and politics at FDU and executive director of the poll.
The FDU poll found that crypto owners favor Trump to Vice President Kamala Harris 50% to 38%. This is in comparison to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from this week shows that Harris is leading Trump by 45% to 41%. The largest betting pool related to the outcome of the upcoming presidential election on Polymarket, meanwhile, has Trump leading Harris by a narrower 50%-48% margin.
“Support for cryptocurrencies is very much a wedge issue that could win over voters that otherwise look more like Democrats,” Casino noted. “The fact that crypto owners aren’t conservatives or liberals or MAGA voters means that they’re up for grabs, and in an election that’s expected to be close, they’re too big a group to ignore.”
Notably, among respondents who did not own crypto, it was Harris that had a 12-point, 53%-to-41% advantage over Trump, according to the poll.
The nationwide poll of 801 respondents found 15% of registered voters say they have owned cryptocurrencies, with crypto owners skewing toward young, male members of racial minorities. FDU is based in New Jersey.
Trump has positioned himself as a crypto-friendly candidate in recent months after previously voicing opposition. He gave a keynote address at last month’s Bitcoin 2024 conference in which he called for the U.S. to be the “crypto capital of the planet.” Kennedy, who recently voiced his support for Trump after suspending his own presidential campaign, has called for a strategic Bitcoin reserve and suggested putting “the entire U.S. budget on blockchain.”
Trump’s increasingly vocal support for cryptocurrencies has resulted in millions of additional dollars in donations from crypto backers. It may have also positioned him well to launch multiple lines of NFTs, which are estimated to have generated millions.
Trump has also recently stepped up to promote his sons’ crypto project, World Liberty Financial, expected to be a decentralized finance (DeFi) play.
While Harris’ campaign has said that she supports policies to help the crypto industry continue to expand as well, she remains strongly associated with the Biden administration, and aggressive crypto enforcement by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and its chair Gary Gensler.