Ryan M. Kelly/AP Photo
Students register to vote at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, October 11, 2024.
“I love Gen Z,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a campaign advertisement. “You know your power. Your power through your voice, through your vote.” But Harris’s attempts to turn out young voters weren’t nearly as successful as she would have hoped. President-elect Donald Trump made large gains with young people disillusioned by their future prospects and by the Democratic candidate who believed that she’d won them over.
Harris’s failure is a direct result of a weak Democratic brand that once again abandoned Generation Z and undermined young voters’ trust in government institutions. Erin Heys, policy director for the Berkeley Institute for Young Americans at the University of California, Berkeley, says young voters are “fatalistic,” and feel that their lives and futures are outside of their control.
Young people see a failed two-party system that ignores their concerns—and progressive youth see Democratic politicians who promised to create a more equitable America and yet are no longer acting in their best interests. The demise of Roe v. Wade, escalating police brutality, and ditching DEI policies have led Gen Z to distrust the government, even if Democrats were not directly responsible for these shifts. Two critical issues, the Israel-Gaza war and the economy, fed into young Americans’ disillusionment with politics and either turned them toward Trump or led them to boycott this election.
The Israel-Gaza war showed that Democrats were unwilling to listen to young voters, particularly college students. Sophie Mansuri, a junior at George Washington University, says she hesitantly voted for Harris despite her “wishy-washy” stance on the war in Gaza, citing campaign ads that displayed different messages both on Israel’s right to self-defense and a call to end the war in Gaza. What ultimately informed her decision, however, was that Harris was “the lesser of two evils.”
“I’m frustrated, but not surprised,” says Charles Cherry, a junior at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, the only all-male historically Black college in the United States. Atlanta played a critical role in flipping Georgia, which voted narrowly for Biden in 2020. In the swing state, however, Harris rallied less support than Biden, despite sharing a common ethnic background with Black voters and a commitment to HBCUs.
Under the guise of empowering men, Republicans catered to young men’s worst patriarchal impulses and used social media as the backbone of their propaganda.
Cherry notes that only a small group of students at Morehouse College were enthusiastic about voting for Harris, while many more people were skeptical. Harris’s identity as a Black woman triggered some misogyny among an increasingly conservative base of young men, and her past as San Francisco’s district attorney and as California’s attorney general also drew concerns about her views on mass incarceration.
Young white men were Trump’s most supportive demographic. Almost half of the surveyed young Latino men voted for Trump, compared to a third of young Latina women. Surprisingly, Trump made gains among young white women despite expectations that women would overwhelmingly support Harris because of her stance on reproductive rights.
Most young voters had concluded that the economy is “somewhat” or “very poor” in a University of Chicago/Gen Forward youth survey. Young men, particularly young conservative white men, expressed that the economy was a top priority—concerns about inflation influenced their votes. Young Latino voters also voiced fears about financial stability and jobs.
Trump took a multifaceted economic approach: tackling housing costs through stricter immigration laws, addressing the rising cost of living, and cutting taxes on income, like ending taxes on tips. Harris made the same pledge on tips, but some of her other proposals, such as down-payment support for first-time homebuyers, didn’t attract the interest of young adults who don’t have the financial means or desire to own a home.
Under the guise of empowering men, Republicans catered to the young men’s worst patriarchal impulses and used social media as the backbone of their propaganda. Both off- and online, conservatives scapegoated women and Democrats by using critical issues like bodily autonomy, framing that concern as “anti-man” instead of anti-control. The GOP also weaponized men’s festering resentment toward what they viewed as feminist politics.
Trump built his presence throughout this “manosphere” by using male voices like Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist and former kickboxer; Logan Paul, a YouTube star and wrestler; and Joe Rogan, a mixed martial arts commentator and podcaster, to indoctrinate young men in economic and immigration policies. The Trump campaign amassed support from less politically active men due to right-wing social influencers meeting them in their online spaces. They convinced young men that Democrats believe masculinity to be the enemy; but conservatives, they argued, were willing to accept young men as they are. Trump’s relationship with Elon Musk also attracted aspiring entrepreneurs and misogynists alike; and he used Musk’s status among tech bros to connect more people to his policies.
Conservatives also leaned into racial biases, convincing non-Black college applicants that Black students took up spaces at elite colleges that they were somehow unqualified for. The GOP also used Asian American students’ dissatisfaction over college admissions processes in the assault on affirmative action, which has benefited white women as much if not more than students of color. On identity issues, they argued that Harris wasn’t Black enough to relate to the Black experience and, in the same breath, branded non-Black voters of color as true Americans—a demographic that Harris wouldn’t support. At least, not like Trump.
President Biden’s broken promises on climate issues that young people monitor, like drilling for oil on public lands in Alaska, also helped tank Harris’s green agenda.
In 2020, youth voters turned out in record numbers. But in 2024, turnout was significantly lower and surprisingly similar to voter turnout in 2016. Why didn’t young people turn up? In short, the increase in overt racism and sexism perpetuated through social media platforms, plus Harris’s association with the war in Gaza, meant that many young Democratic voters of college age just decided to pass on the 2024 presidential election.
Splitting Democrats has always been essential to building the Republican brand. By highlighting the divisions in the party, Republicans have successfully portrayed the Democratic Party as a jumble of conflicting ideas all fighting for their slice of the rhetorical pie. In contrast, Republicans used that internal chaos to appear calm and focused on issues like the economy that mattered most to voters.
Democrats must ensure Gen Z has a future that they can be enthused about. They can start by combating “doomer” and fatalistic mindsets permeating politics. For Gen Z, not only are Democrats spineless, but they are willing to use issues to garner support, with no intention of fixing the problem. The perception exists that the party only appeals to young Americans when they need their votes and they don’t put in the hard work to build stable coalitions outside of presidential election cycles. Republicans capitalized on those growing fractures.
Democrats could win back Gen Z by acknowledging their anxiety about the state of the world and pledging substantial economic and social changes that would benefit people entering adulthood. The Democrats assumed that since they had secured the youth vote, they did not need to carve out specific policies for young people. That disconnect allowed Republicans to spoon-feed uninformed voters with misinformation about Trumponomics to quell their fears about the future. Young Americans wanted policies that would make real changes in their increasingly difficult lives and point the way to better circumstances—and the Democrats did not deliver. As Mansuri says, “If you don’t listen to your constituents, we don’t owe you any loyalty.”
