‘Gen Z is feeling the Kamalove’: Youth-led progressive groups hope Harris will energize young voters – National
“Kids for Harris.” “We need a Kamalanomenon.” Generation Z feels the Kamalove.
Since President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala HarrisGen Z voters rushed to social media to share memes about coconut trees and “brat summer” — reflecting a dramatic shift in tone for a generation that has expressed feelings of being left behind by the Democratic Party.
Progressive youth-led organizations have been warning for months that Biden has a problem with young voters, pleading with the president to work more closely with them to refocus on the issues that matter most to younger generations or risk losing their votes. With Biden out of the race, many of these young leaders are now hoping Harris can overcome her flagging support among Gen Z and harness a new burst of energy among young voters.
Since Sunday, statements from youth organizations across the country, including in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, Minnesota, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, have been rife. Leaders have thanked Biden for stepping down and celebrated the opportunity to organize around a new candidate. On Friday, a coalition of 17 youth-led groups endorsed Harris.
“It changes everything,” said Zo Tobi, communications director for the Movement Voter Project, a national progressive fundraising group focused on youth-led organizations, when he learned Biden was dropping out of the race and endorsing Harris. “The world as it is suddenly became the world as it could be.”
As the campaign enters a new phase, Harris and her Republican rival, Donald Trump, are both expected to target messages aimed at young voters, who could prove decisive in some of the most contested states. Trump spoke Friday night at a Turning Point USA conference, and Harris plans to deliver a virtual speech Saturday to Voters of Tomorrow, an organization focused on young voters.
John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics who has worked with Biden, said the “burning energy” among young people was something he hadn’t seen since former President Barack Obama’s campaign. While there are no reliable polls yet, he described the dynamic as “a combination of the hope we saw with Obama and the urgency and fight we saw after the Parkland shooting.”
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In many ways, it was the first time many young people felt heard and felt like their actions could have an impact on policy, they and several young leaders said.
“It was a game changer in this election,” he said. “People, especially young people, have been discouraged for so long, for so many important reasons, by politics and by the direction the country is going. It weighed on them. And then they wake up the next morning and it seems like everything has changed.”
About 6 in 10 adults under 30 voted for Biden in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, but his ratings among the group have fallen significantly since then, with only about a quarter of the group saying they had a favorable view of him in the latest AP-NORC poll, conducted before Biden dropped out of the race.
This poll, along with New York Times/Siena and CNN polls conducted after Biden withdrew, suggests that Harris is starting with slightly better favorable ratings than Biden among young adults.
Sunjay Muralitharan, vice president of College Democrats of America, said he felt like a weight had been lifted off his chest when Harris entered the race.
Despite monthly calls for coalition between youth-led groups and the Biden campaign, Muralitharan spent months worrying about how Biden would fare with young voters as he saw young people leaving organizations like the College Democrats and Young Democrats to join more left-wing groups.
College Democrats have issued statements and social media posts encouraging the party to prioritize young people and change course on the Gaza war and have “worked tirelessly to get a College Democrat lineup” at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later this summer. But they’ve received little attention in return, Muralitharan said.
A Harris campaign represents an opportunity to move in a new direction, he said. The vice president has shown support for issues that matter to young voters, like climate change and reproductive rights, Muralitharan said, adding that she might also be able to change course and distance herself from Biden’s approach to the Gaza war.
“The ongoing problem we face is that Biden is the lesser of two evils and he’s impacting the crisis in Gaza,” he said. “For months, we were given this false narrative that made it difficult for us to mobilize young voters. But that’s changed now.”
Santiago Mayer, executive director of the Gen Z voter engagement organization Voters of Tomorrow, said the Biden campaign “created an entirely new framework for working with youth organizations” that can now be used to support Harris’ campaign.
“Gen Z loves Vice President Harris, and Vice President Harris loves Gen Z,” he said. “So we’re willing to work for her.”
© 2024 The Canadian Press
