Harris sees signs of surging enthusiasm among young voters

Vice President Harris is trouncing former President Trump among young voters in the latest polls, a promising sign as her campaign courts the demographic that’s been energized online by coconut tree memes and jokes that the Democratic nominee is “brat.” 

A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Thursday found young people swung a massive 24 points between June and August, from favoring former President Trump over President Biden by 11 points to picking Harris over Trump by 13 points. 

Still, organizers face the challenge of harnessing online excitement and translating it into action at the ballot box from an age group that tends to turn out at lower rates than older counterparts.

“It's very easy to put a hashtag and say, ‘Oh ... I support it.’ But does that translate into actually getting votes, getting people into the voting booth?” asked Melissa Deckman, CEO of the nonpartisan research firm PRRI and the author of “The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy.”

Harris has seen a swell of popularity online in the first few weeks of her bid, stoked by her running mate's branding of the Trump-Vance ticket as "weird" and ongoing viral riffs on a 2023 anecdote in which she quoted her mother saying: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

Her campaign has leaned in, with a “Kamala HQ” TikTok profile “providing context” as they amp up youth organizing and reach out to students as they head back to campus for the new school year.

Harris has now taken the lead over Trump in national head-to-heads, according to polling averages from Decision Desk HQ/The Hill, and her numbers among young people look promising, particularly in critical swing states.

A New York Times/Siena poll of presidential battleground states earlier this month showed Harris with an 8-point lead over Trump among voters aged 18-29, after finding Trump with a slight edge over Biden in May.

Voters of Tomorrow, an organization led by Generation Z that’s backing Harris, also found in a new survey that Harris was the clear favorite among young people in battleground states. Two-thirds of registered young swing-state voters supported her candidacy, while just 22 percent picked Trump, marking a massive 44-point lead for the vice president. 

A new Morning Consult/Bloomberg News poll of swing states found Harris up 12 points over Trump in a head-to-head among voters aged 18-34, a shift from when Trump was leading Biden by 1 point in early July, just before the incumbent’s exit.  

The enthusiasm before and after the Democrats’ historic ticket switch-up is “night and day,” Deckman said, but “it’s always a challenge to get younger people out.”

Youth voter turnout increased between 2016 and 2020, according to data from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts, with roughly 55 percent of people aged 18-29 casting ballots in the last cycle. But voters under 30 made up just 15 percent of all voters that year, according to Pew Research, while voters 65 and older made up 27 percent. Data late last year began flashing warning signs that younger voters may be even less likely to vote this cycle than they were in 2020.

The “brat summer” of Harris memes may be winding down after the Democrats’ boisterous convention last week, with Election Day now fewer than 70 days away, said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.

“She’s still not winning young people by what Biden won young people by at the end of the campaign in 2020,” Paleologos told The Hill. “Movement among young voters has put her in the game to be competitive in this election,” he said, pointing to poll data showing Harris closing Biden’s gap with Trump on who young voters feel would best handle the economy. “She's still not where she needs to be with young voters, but she's getting closer.”

Youth organizers are largely optimistic that Harris can get there.

“Yes, there's kind of this overarching concern that people say, that ‘young people don't vote,’ but also, young people are the foundational pillars of our democratic process,” said Sunjay Muralitharan, national vice president of College Democrats of America, a group that’s endorsed Harris. 

Many young Americans were “nail biting” with Biden at the top of the ticket, Muralitharan said. And although some polling earlier this year did show Biden with a sizable edge over Trump among young Americans, even as he faced concerns about his age, Harris is giving young voters a jolt of energy that had been harder to rev up under the incumbent, he argued.

Now, part of making that energy stick is meeting young people where they are, both in person and online, and helping them make a plan to cast their ballots in the fall. 

“Our whole coalition is investing in social media outreach. It's working, and hopefully it will continue to move the needle,” said Jack Lobel, spokesperson for Voters of Tomorrow. “Our goal is to translate excitement online and on the ground into political action.” 

The group’s latest survey found nearly 7 in 10 young people in battleground states said they were “absolutely certain” or “very likely” to vote in November, a jump up from around 5 in 10 who said the same in February.

At the same time, other young, Democrat-leaning voters are holding off on a full embrace of the new ticket. The youth-led climate activist group Sunrise Movement is organizing for Harris, but it hasn't endorsed her. 

Though Harris is “a clear choice” over Trump, said Stevie O’Hanlon, communications director for Sunrise Movement, the group wants to see the vice president get into more specifics on how she’ll address the climate crisis, as well as make progress on a cease-fire in Gaza. 

“The Harris campaign doesn't have the youth vote locked up,” said Josh Lafazan, a Democratic former Nassau County legislator from New York, who was first elected to local office at age 18. The vice president has “really struck momentum at the right time” so far, he said, but the campaign can’t let up its efforts to draw young voters into her column and encourage them to take their online enthusiasm to the polls.  

“I think she's in an excellent position, but I think she needs to articulate exactly what she’ll do to help make the lives of young people better. Young people are very savvy. Platitudes are not sufficient,” Lafazan said. “And I think young people are going to make the difference in many of these key swing states.”