The Harris and Trump campaigns are stepping up their outreach to Gen Z voters in critical battlegrounds, a voting bloc expected to play a key role in what is shaping up to be a battle for inches in the race for the White House.
The efforts come as Harris sees a clear advantage among young voters, having regained the party’s footing with younger voters since President Biden stood down from the race. A Harvard IOP poll from last week shows that she has tripled her lead against Trump among likely young voters, compared to a Trump-Biden matchup in the spring.
“I think the outreach is pretty unprecedented in the size and scope and level of involvement,” March For Our Lives co-founder David Hogg told The Hill about the Harris campaign. “But, it wasn’t given to us. We weren’t given a seat at the table. We brought our own chair…the party has not been great at evolving for young people, but I think finally there’s really a recognition.”
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is seeing an opportunity to capitalize on young people’s dissatisfaction with the economy, immigration and cost of living to flip them red.
“We are seeing a potential to really make the margins a lot more favorable for Republicans in November than they have been in the past,” said Wisconsin College GOP chair William Blathras. “This is really the greatest chance we have to flip Gen Z red.”
Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt pointed to Trump’s recent visit to the University of Alabama for a football game where “clips of of President Trump tossing out chicken nuggets to college students have garnered millions of views and engagement online organically” as evidence that Trump is making inroads with younger voters.
“Kamala Harris has to bus people into events and pay influencers for support online, [while] President Trump is an authentic man of the people with infinite aura,” she added, using an expression popularized by Gen Z.
The Trump campaign is partnering with Turning Point Action, a Conservative group led by Charlie Kirk, a right-wing online personality, to host events and actions to drive out voters, according to Blathras.
The Harris campaign dismissed Trump’s efforts, calling them “unserious” — another expression made popular by Gen Z.
“The fact that Donald Trump thinks he can buy their votes with empty gestures and a few podcasts is unserious and insulting,” Harris spokesperson Seth Schuster wrote to The Hill.
Catherine Whiteford, co-chair of the Young Republican National Federation, said she met with RNC Chair Michael Whatley, who she said is “committed to supporting” outreach to young voters. However, the RNC and campaign have not decided on “anything concrete” that is tied to investing in winning over youth voters.
“There’s been some discussion about that, but it hasn’t been anything concrete thus far, but they have been willing to help connect us with donors and that kind of thing, but nothing so far that has been direct,” Whiteford said. “But I do think that there is an opportunity for that moving forward.”
College Republican national chair Courtney Hope Britt also expressed optimism about GOP efforts to reach young voters.
“Between our extensive phone banking, door knocking, and in some states, voter registration operations, it is no surprise that the GOP is performing better among college-age voters than at any point since the Reagan Revolution,” Britt said.
In January, Democrats hired Even Levenson, a 24-year-old organizer who worked at March For Our Lives, to strengthen their presidential campaign’s youth outreach efforts. In past cycles, that position was not filled until July or August.
Under Levenson, the campaign has hired 150 organizers across battleground states, working with “more youth-dedicated staff than previous presidential campaigns.”
Political operatives say the effort is making a difference in critical battleground states.
“North Carolina Democrats have been organizing voters genuinely where they are this year, because we understood that the potential was there and there was lacking investment but the Harris campaign came in and doubled down on investments,” North Carolina political strategist Grayson Barnette said.
“There are above 50 college campus organizers now and a lot of these colleges overlap with competitive state legislative and congressional races, so the investments that they make there are benefiting Democrats up and down the ballot and long term,” he added.
Young voters are increasingly turning out to vote, unlike in election cycles of the past.
According to Anil Cacodcar, a co-chair of the Harvard Institute of Politics youth poll, young voter turnout today is more than double that of their parents when their parents were their age. Turnout among young voters jumped 11 points between 2016 and 2020 and is predicted to grow again during this election cycle.
According to UNC-Chapel Hill College Democrats President Sloan Duvall, “enthusiasm on campus is unparalleled,” with “students running up to grab voter registration forms now when we had to beg them in the past.”
“It’s made my life as a College Dems president easy just by having Kamala Harris as our nominee because of the enthusiasm and investments she’s brought to the election,” she added.
University of Georgia College Democrats President Jacob Hays has seen a surge in interest with meetings “overflowing” — but he thinks Democrats still need to do more.
“We have over 40,000 students, which is almost four times the margin that all of they won Georgia due to Georgia,” Hays said. “I think they need to continue to invest in college campuses. They’ve done great things having campus organizers across the state, but I also think that they need to put more resources there and make sure that they have beyond-the-ground game.”
Specifically, Hays pointed to Harris’s campaign needing to message on policy better, saying many young voters do not know much about Harris’s plans to lower housing costs and improve the economy.
Georgia campuses that have historically not seen high levels of political engagement are also turning out during this election cycle.
“Georgia Tech is not politically engaged in general, just with a lot of tech students, but that seems to be really changing this year,” Georgia Tech College Democrats executive board member Lukas Kassalty said. “I think that the marketing campaigns the two parties are doing a good job at getting young people involved.”
According to Jacquelyn Harn, chair of the Georgia Young Republicans, the group has also seen increased engagement on campus.
“They’re trending more than usual to be more conservative,” Harn said. “College students, especially men, are getting an agenda pushed down their throat, and I think the only way for them to counter that is kind of just to come across this with a more traditional conservative right, more ideals.
“I think a lot of them are afraid to speak out because they feel like they can’t. But in general, I think more young people are trying to be conservative than ever before, because they realize they can’t afford the cost of living,” she added.
According to Matt Nelsen, a pollster focusing on youth voters and a professor at the University of Miami, younger Democratic voters have ranked abortion and reproductive rights as their top issues, while Republicans have rated inflation as their highest priority.
Some Democrats have raised concerns about Harris’s messaging, saying it is not doing enough to reach younger men.
“There’s a zero-sum mentality that we have with a lot of issues that if we talk about men you are taking away time from talking about women and reproductive rights,” said Liz Plank, co-founder of Hotties for Harris and reproductive rights advocate.
Hogg added that if Democrats lose in November, it will be because “young men have left the Democratic Party.”
“We’re hesitant to even talk about what young men are dealing with because, you know, men have been with the conversation for literally 1000s of years,” he said. “I think that anytime that there’s been a conversation historically about like, the inclusion of men, it’s meant exclusion of other people, in particular women. And we need to have a new conversation about that.”
According to a Harris campaign official, the campaign is investing heavily in winning young men with paid media programs “skewing heavily towards reaching male persuasion voters,” including ads at sporting events.
“We just need to do more work to at least slow the bleeding right now with the party and realize that it doesn’t mean just because we’re talking about young men doesn’t mean that we don’t care about all women,” Hogg said.
