Commentary August 28, 2024

Kamala’s Gen Z problem

Harris is popular among young voters, like Obama in 2008. But the comparisons stop there.

Daniel A. Cox

Business Insider

In the 48 hours after Kamala Harris announced her run for president on July 21, nearly 40,000 people registered to vote on vote.org — 83% of whom were under 35. The groundswell of support from young people, NPR correspondent Tamara Keith recently said, indicates “the kind of enthusiasm they haven’t experienced since Obama.” But can the Harris campaign harness the energy of young voters in the same way Obama did 16 years ago all the way to victory?

Back in 2008, the Obama campaign made an unprecedented effort to target young voters. During the Democratic primary, it organized 175 student chapters in Iowa, which led to a burst of youth participation in the caucuses. In critical swing states like Pennsylvania and Nevada, young voters were more likely to report being contacted by the Obama campaign than older voters were. The precision campaigning combined with Obama’s hopeful and inclusive message helped lead him to a landslide victory. In fall 2008, 70% of young voters had a favorable view of Obama, and two-thirds of voters under 30 went on to vote for him. Now, the Democrats’ newly anointed nominee is looking to borrow from the same playbook.

The problem is it’s not 2008 anymore, and Harris’ task is undoubtedly more difficult. While young voters are more excited about Harris than they were about Joe Biden, a recent Pew Research Center poll found that less than half of young voters have a favorable view of Harris, and her campaign has far less time than usual to convince them to check the box next to her name this fall. After looking at the data and speaking with Gen Z voters from across the political spectrum, it’s clear that time is not the only hurdle that Harris faces.

Young voters share one fundamental attribute: They are irregular voters. They’re just starting to develop political interests and priorities that will inform their level of participation and political identity — and those are heavily shaped by the unique climate in which they come of age. The young voters that Harris (and Trump) are reaching out to today are far different from those who were showing up to Obama rallies in 2008.

For one, today’s young voters are less connected to either political party. A collapse in public trust over the past few decades has coincided with the emergence of an ascendant independent streak among young adults. More than half of Gen Zers consider themselves politically independent, according to Gallup — a 5 percentage-point increase over how millennials identified in 2012. And nearly four in 10 young adults have a negative view of both political parties, a record high.

The earnestness that characterized the way young adults viewed their country in the early 2000s has been replaced by an implacable negativity. In 2024, only 21% of young adults said they were “extremely proud” to be an American, a 34-point drop from roughly a decade earlier. Young adults have also expressed more cynicism about American exceptionalism. In 2021, 70% of people 65 or older said that more countries in the world would be much better off if they adopted American values. Only 43% of adults under 30 felt the same.

The issues that fire up young voters are increasingly out of step with the interests of an older, more moderate electorate.

For many of their formative years, Gen Z has been fed a steady diet of political cynicism. Research has shown that beginning around 2012, news outlets increasingly used language denoting negative emotions, such as anger, fear, disgust, and sadness, in headlines. Researchers speculated that the feedback on engagement that news outlets received from social-media platforms incentivized more negative headlines.

Hunter, a 25-year-old Republican in Michigan, told me he does not trust either candidate. “Trump is not an honest person at all, but I do think we have a clearer picture of who he is because he did have a term as a president and a lot of his dirty laundry has already been aired out,” he said. “I’m suspicious of Kamala Harris, given how she’s trying to reframe things.”

Hunter said he “begrudgingly” plans to vote for Trump. (The young voters in this article are being referred to by their first names so they can speak openly about their political views.)

On the left, a 2021 Pew study identified a new group called the “outside left,” described as young, discontented Democrats. They are very liberal, secular, and dislike Republicans, but they also have little patience with the Democratic Party. The rise of this faction has complicated Democratic electoral politics. Young progressives exert far more influence over Democrats, the media, and left-leaning nonprofits than they once did. David Shor, a political analyst, argued in an interview with Politico that college-educated young liberals were pushing Democrats “to use overly ideological language, to not show enough messaging or policy restraint and, from a symbolic perspective, to use words that regular voters literally don’t understand.”

For instance, Gen Z is the first generation to fully embrace the use of gender-neutral labels and concepts like “intersectionality” that older generations aren’t as familiar with. Young, college-educated activists were also the most vocal in pushing Democrats to defund the police. But on this issue, they were outliers — a 2021 survey found that while 63% of young people favored “cutting some funding from police departments in your community and shifting it to social services,” less than half (37%) of all Americans agreed.

Where Obama faced little pressure from young voters to support progressive causes such as same-sex marriage in 2008, Harris has faced fierce criticism from young progressives on a number of issues — the climate crisis and US support of Israel chief among them. Her record as a prosecutor has also drawn criticism from young activists.

This tension reflects a larger generational divide among Democratic voters. Younger Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have become much more liberal over the past decade. But the issues that fire up young voters are increasingly out of step with the interests of an older, more moderate electorate.

Another growing difference between young voters in 2008 and now is the mounting gender divide. Roughly equal numbers of young men and women had favorable views of Obama (72% and 66%, respectively) and voted for him in 2008. But over the past decade, the politics of young men and women have uncoupled.

Young women have grown more liberal, and young men have become noticeably more sympathetic to the GOP. After backing Biden in 2020, young men “now favor Republican control of Congress and Trump for president,” while young women are strongly backing Harris, Wall Street Journal polling found. Over the past few weeks, young women have become more enthusiastic about Harris’ candidacy, while young men have not. A new poll of voters under 30 conducted in battleground states found that 59% of women had a favorable view of Harris compared to only 38% of men.

Most of the young women I interviewed said that Harris’ gender was not a decisive factor for them, but many of their male peers believed that it was. “I see a lot of a lot of people, especially my age, who say, ‘I’m voting for Harris because she’s going to be the first female president,'” said Hunter. “OK, great. Do you know what her policies are? ‘Well, no, but she’s gonna be the first female president.’ That’s a silly opinion to me, and I see a lot of it.”

For her part, Harris has not made the historic nature of her candidacy a major talking point. In doing so, she is breaking from Hillary Clinton’s “I’m with her” strategy in 2016 and returning to Obama’s more subtle approach. But Harris has focused on issues, such as abortion, that young women care about far more than men. Meanwhile, the GOP is going all in on young men; a pro-Trump super PAC is poised to invest $20 million to convince them to vote for Trump. And the Trump campaign has gone to great lengths to portray him as a strong and decisive leader — a trait that is uniquely important to men. A recent New York Times/Siena poll found that men were far more likely to say Trump is a strong leader than to say he is intelligent, compassionate, or could bring about change.

As trust in America’s governing institutions has declined, the benefits of being viewed as a political outsider have grown. A 2018 Monmouth University poll found that with all else being equal, most voters would prefer a candidate with outsider credentials than one with extensive political experience. Young voters especially have always been more suspicious of career politicians.

So to court America’s young voters, Harris needs to appeal to their desire for something new. But therein lies the biggest difference between her and Obama. While Obama hit the scene as a political outsider who promised to shake things up, Harris is more limited.

Obama burst onto the national stage in 2004 with a generation-defining address at the Democratic National Convention. He launched his presidential campaign in early 2007 promising something different and enlisting college students in the cause along the way. He won the nomination by beating the archetype of insider candidates, Hillary Clinton. From the outset, Obama positioned himself as an outsider, someone who wanted to fundamentally change business-as-usual politics. In fall 2007, Obama famously said during a campaign speech, “I’m not running to conform to Washington’s conventional thinking — I’m running to challenge it.”

Kamala Harris has had an entirely different political trajectory. She joined Joe Biden’s ticket after an uninspiring primary campaign that ended before Iowa. She won the nomination after Biden stepped down and Democratic leaders coalesced around her candidacy. This is not the résumé of an outsider. What’s more, as the sitting vice president, she cannot easily break from the current policy commitments of the White House or campaign as someone who will shake things up.

Ultimately, Harris doesn’t need young voters to adore her, just to vote for her.

In her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Harris avoided making promises to enact sweeping changes. Rather, she emphasized familiar values and issued fairly standard policy positions — a return to normality after the uncertainty and absurdity of the Trump years.

It’s clear that many young people still want to be inspired that better things are possible in their own lives and for the country. After Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, views about whether the country was headed in the right direction became notably more positive among young voters. The New York Times/Siena poll found that 27% of young voters said the country was headed in the right direction, up from 13% two weeks earlier. To be sure, there is still an awful lot of pessimism among young people, but this is a remarkable turnaround in a very short time.

Perhaps the greatest advantage that Harris has with young voters is her optimism about the future. While Trump has often made dire forecasts and offered only a grim view of the present, Harris’ campaign has purposefully adopted a more joyful attitude. She smiles and laughs when delivering her stump speech. Her vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, has been described as a “walking bear hug.” Nostalgia-hungry millennials are relishing in the return to “Obamacore” optimism.

But it’s too early to say whether it’s enough to convince Gen Z. Harris has momentum and young voters appear to be giving her a second look, but her political views and priorities are still not well known. “I wasn’t super excited about the candidates,” said Melanie, a 27-year-old Democrat living in Florida. “I felt still pretty confident that I was going to probably vote for Biden. Now that Harris is in the race, I feel a little bit more confident.” Hardly inspiring stuff.

One young woman I talked to in Nevada kept calling her “Camilla Harrison.” (She was supportive of Harris but hadn’t committed to voting for her). This lack of visibility may ultimately help by giving Harris a second opportunity to make a first impression with young voters, but it’s going to take some work. Ultimately, Harris doesn’t need young voters to adore her, just to vote for her. That will be hard enough.