By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Susan Svrluga, The Washington Post (c) 2024
ATLANTA – On the way to his dorm between classes at Morehouse College, freshman Daylan Moore, 18, was stopped in his tracks by a question:
“Baby, have you registered to vote?”
A bright-eyed woman, donning the royal blue and gold colors of the sorority Sigma Gamma Rho, beckoned Moore over to a sign-up table.
The group from the Fulton County elections office, wearing the colors of their Black Greek sororities, had a steady flow of registrants from the lunchtime crowd. It was hard for studentsto ignore the gentle nudge from women who reminded them of their mothers or aunties.
Moore quickly grabbed a form. The sociology major from Los Angeles had already registered in his home state but said he will instead use his one vote, which he plans to cast for Vice President Kamala Harris, where it could have more impact: in the swing state of Georgia.He worries about the erosion of abortion rights. He worries about the future of affirmative action.
“This is a critical election,” Moore said, standing in front of Chivers Dining Hall at the historically Black, all-male college that cohosted the registration drive.
Young voters could have a monumental impact on the election, including the deadlocked presidential contest. Nationwide, nearly 42 million 18-to-27-year-olds – the group known as Generation Z – will be eligible to vote, according to a Post analysis of 2022 census data. Nearly half are people of color.
In the seven battleground states – Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – about 7.8 million Gen Zers areeligible to vote in this fall’s election.
Some observers say colleges have become more important than in past elections, with campuses hosting more voter-registration drives, debate watch parties and panel discussions designed to urge students to vote.
The momentum is building just as a national poll released Tuesdayindicates 18-to-29-year-old likely voters are leaning heavily toward Harris.
The Harvard Youth Poll showed Harris leading Trump 64 percent to 32 percent among likely young voters.
The poll, conducted by the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School earlier this month, also found a widening gap in enthusiasm,, with 74 percent of young Democrats saying they would “definitely” vote in November, compared with 60 percent of young Republicans.
Harris also held pronounced leads of at least 20 points over Trump among young adults who were asked which candidate they trusted more to handle issues including climate change, abortion, health care, and gun violence prevention, researchers found.
“It’s an incredibly consequential subgroup of voters,” said John Della Volpe, IOP polling director, and both campaigns are well aware of that.
Trump’s campaign has invested in influencers and other efforts to reach young people, especially young men, and was making significant headway, Della Volpesaid.Some polling he saw indicated Trump was ahead among young voters in battleground states in early July.
But, he said, the most recent data indicates young people seem to be rallying back to the Democrats.
“Gen Z and young millennials’ heightened enthusiasm,” he said in a release announcing the new poll results, “signals a potentially decisive role for the youth vote in 2024.”
These voters are digital natives who grew up online in an increasingly polarized country, amid the pandemic, school lockdown drills and rapid cultural changes. The age group’s impact as a voting bloc has been dismissed or minimized in the past, but young voters turned out in record numbers for the 2020 election.
The share of 18-to-29 year-olds voting jumped from 44 percent in 2016 to 53 percent in 2020.
Two-thirds of college students voted in 2020.
The Harris and Trump campaigns are taking notice.
Harris is investing in digital ads on campus and across social media, doubling her campaign’s youth organizing staff around the country, and has launched a college campus tour in battleground states. A graduate of the historically Black institution Howard University, Harris has also made a big push on HBCU campuses. On National Voter Registration Day, Sept. 17, the campaign kicked off a week of action to encourage young voters in swing states to register to vote.
On a call with young organizers last week, Harris said the younger generation is one of the reasons she is so “optimistic and excited about the future of our country,” because it is full of brilliant, impatient people who are not waiting for someone to step up to lead.
“Your generation is killing it,” Harris said.
Trump campaign officials say the former president has a natural appeal that resonates with the demographic, evidenced by popularity on social media platforms such as TikTok. The campaign said some of the “biggest social media stars in the world” want to be associated with the campaign, citing controversial YouTuber Logan Paul and gamer Adin Ross.
“President Trump’s unmatched aura is why he naturally resonates with young voters and some of the most influential Gen Z social media stars want to be seen with him,” said Alex Bruesewitz, a Trump campaign adviser.
Youthan Love, a senior at Belmont Abbey College, has been working to recruit students statewide as chairman of the North Carolina Federation of College Republicans, urging people to fill out the whole ballot when they vote in the swing state.
On campus, where he’s president of the campus chapter of the College Republicans, Love said, “sometimes just getting people involved is the first hurdle that you need to get over. You’ve got to find some way to motivate college students to get them engaged.”
He supports Trump. “He did some great things for the American people,” he said. He is staunchly opposed to abortion, but said inflation is the No. 1 issue in this election. “We really need to bring that down, make things more affordable for college students.”
Young voters are not politically monolithic, but their top concerns often differ from those of older voters.
Adults younger than 30 were most likely to say the economy (70 percent), health care (62 percent) and abortion (53 percent) were very important in their vote for president, according to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted Aug. 26 to Sept. 2. They were least likely to rank foreign policy, immigration and climate change (all at 43 percent) as “very important” on that list of issues.
But 18-to-29-year-old adults were slightly more likely than the public overall to say climate change was very important – 37 percent of all adults said this. And while racial and ethnic inequality isn’t one of young adults’ top issues in the survey, with 46 percent saying it was very important to their decision, that figure is higher than the 39 percent among the general public.
Mary-Pat Hector, the head of Rise, a national nonprofit that mobilizes young voters, said the change at the top of the Democratic ticket has “shifted the political atmosphere.” Before Harris entered the race, Hector said young people avoided her staff of student organizers, but now students are seeking out the group to register to vote and get involved.
The nonprofit is hosting a series of trainings at campuses in battleground states, including the University of Nevada and North Carolina State University, to teach students how to engage friends and family about registering to vote and getting to the polls. Hector said a key challenge is also educating out-of-statestudents about their rights to vote in the state where they attend college.
At Morehouse, Kaelyn Kirkpatrick Jones explained to students that as long as they had a valid ID from any state, they could vote in Georgia.
“Some parents figure their kids should mail in absentee ballots,” said Kirkpatrick Jones, a regional leader of the school’s parent council. “But those ballots can take a while to get to where they’re going and those votes would do a world of good right here.”
At Fort Valley State University in Georgia Tuesday, the energy of first-time voters was palpable as the public historically Black institution served as the last stop on the ten-campus Vote HBCU tour, a joint effort of the nonprofits Xceleader and HeadCount.
The groups hosted a full-on festival, complete with food trucks and an appearance by the founders of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream (a sponsor of the tour), followed by a panel discussion.
LaVonne Wilson-Taylor, a junior from San Diego studying computer science who attended the panel, said she felt a sense of urgency to vote. She said the cost of college is always top of mind, and a key issue for her in this election.
“It should be easier for people to afford college,” Wilson-Taylor, 20, said. She is all in for Harris, who she sees as a transformational candidate. A Black and Asian woman becoming president, she said, would be a “huge inspiration for so many young people who could now see themselves in a position of power that used to seem impossible in this country.”
Tevon Blair, cofounder of Xceleader, said his goal is to channel the enthusiasm for Harris into a long-term commitment to civic engagement, beyondjust support for one person in one election.
“It shouldn’t take a candidate to make your voices heard,” he said. “You should know there’s power in your vote.”
At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Thomas Pile, chairman of the campus chapter of the College Republicans, said he is encouraged by how open-minded his classmates with different political attitudes have been in discussing the candidates’ positions.
Pile, a senior studying political science, isn’t fully sold on Trump. Pile said he is supporting Republicans in down-ballot races with more conservative values.
“I know with 100 percent certainty I will not be voting for Kamala Harris. I just don’t know if I’ll be voting for Trump or writing in a candidate,” Pile, 21, said.
The main pitch he is making to students is to pay attention to which candidates want to take action on economic issues that impact their lives, like the rising price of groceries and rents.
Olivia D’Angelo, 23, a senior at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, is involved with the campus chapter of Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit group that aims to mobilize high school and college students.
“Where I am, people are very aware of the stakes,” D’Angelo said. Her classmates are politically involved, advocating for issues, volunteering for campaigns – and aware that North Carolina is a swing state. “I get asked several times a day, while walking around campus, if I’m registered to vote.”
She is politically independent and plans to vote for Trump, “as of right now,” she said. She did not vote for him in 2020. But, she said, “I became more informed.” She supports limited federal government and free markets and low taxes. She opposes abortion. She thinks Trump will be stronger on national security.
“I’m one of those people that normally gets all dressed up in American gear to go to vote and get my sticker and all that,” she said.
“I’m much more anxious this time. I’ve never felt more motivated to vote,”D’Angelo said.“Just because of how divided things are – both in our government and in the population.”
– – –
Scott Clement contributed to this report.