The Harris-Walz campaign and outside organizations made an early investment in youth voter engagement this cycle, both on the ground and online with social media accounts like @kamalahq.
It may be paying off. Early vote data trickling in from battleground states is providing some insight as to how youth voter turnout could shake out nationwide. Per the data, an increasingly strong presence from young voters last week seems like a good sign for Vice President Kamala Harris, given that younger Americans typically lean left. A recent Harvard youth poll showed Harris up over former President Donald Trump by 20 percentage points among registered voters under 30.
Early voting surged amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but Tom Bonier, senior advisor to Target Smart, a Democratic firm that tracks early voting data, said he wasn’t expecting to see the same levels of pre-Election Day voting in 2024, especially from younger voters. More than half of likely voters under 30 plan to cast their ballots on Election Day, according to the latest Harvard Youth Poll. But while young voters account for a smaller share of the early vote as of Saturday than at that point in 2020, there are key takeaways from the data that are worth noting.
According to Bonier, young women are out-voting young men at a higher rate than they did in 2020. Even more so, he said, looking at early vote data, “there’s higher turnout from young voters of color, and especially young women of color.”
“The youth vote that has come out is more diverse and less white than it was at this point in 2020,” Bonier told Teen Vogue, adding that this result is “consistent” with the firm’s analysis of new voter registration data from battleground states after Harris became the presumptive nominee in July. TargetSmart has tracked an uptick in registrations from young women since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022 — which led to high turnout from young voters (and support for Democrats from young women especially) in that year’s midterms.
This year’s early vote data tracks with a well-documented partisan and engagement gender gap among young voters. During the Trump-era, Gen Z women have moved further to the left on the ideological spectrum, while men of the same generation have plateaued as pretty moderate, according to Gallup data. The Trump campaign worked to jack up the margins with young men, attempting to appeal to them through appearances with figures like influencer and wrestler Logan Paul, the Nelk Boys, and Joe Rogan — but the early vote numbers haven’t shown that cohort turning out as much as young women yet, Bonier said.
Regionally, Bonier confirmed that early vote turnout picked up among 18-29-year-olds in Dane County, Wisconsin after Harris held a rally there with Remi Wolf and Gracie Abrams on Wednesday night. Young voters made up 19% of early votes cast in the state’s fastest-growing county last week and reached 22% Thursday and Friday, according to TargetSmart’s data.
In North Carolina, the Triangle, Triad, and Charlotte regions saw the highest early vote turnout in the state, with new registered Democratic voters outpacing newly registered Republican voters, Bonier said. North Carolina colleges including North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Appalachian State University, and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University engaged in an early voting competition, a coordinated effort with the Harris campaign, the North Carolina Democratic Party, and the College Democrats of North Carolina. State College Democrats President Nathan Linville said the group’s priority this year was collecting “commit to vote” cards. “It was just asking for your name, your email address, your phone number, and what campus you were on, and then using that information, we were able to send them Google calendar invites as soon as early voting started on October 17 that gave them their local polling place,” Linville said. Even if students said they wouldn’t vote for national Democratic candidates, “we really tried to go down-ballot, he added.
And in Georgia, the youth share (ages 18-29) of individuals who had cast their ballots in person was 25%, when the state’s early voting period ended, per TargetSmart. That number is on pace with 2020, according to the firm.
According to youth voter engagement group Voters of Tomorrow, which has endorsed the Harris-Walz campaign, young voters had far outpaced early vote projections made by the group in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia as of Sunday. “Early vote numbers in key battleground states are wildly surpassing our expectations,” said Jack Lobel, the group’s press secretary.
So what’s behind the early youth vote surge?
“I think it’s a broader cultural shift in habit that Gen Z has developed,” said David Hogg, co-founder of Leaders We Deserve, which supports young progressives running for Congress and state legislatures, as well as March for Our Lives, which started rallying young people to vote in 2018 after the Parkland school shooting. “We voted at the highest rates in the past three elections of any generation to come before us, and we voted very clearly in one direction,” Hogg, who has campaigned for the Walz-Harris ticket, told Teen Vogue, emphasizing research suggesting that voting is a habit.
From the get-go, the Democratic presidential campaign seemed to understand that young voters were crucial to their potential path to victory and made an early effort to court them. Eve Levenson, the campaign’s youth engagement director, is 24. She was hired by the then-Biden-Harris campaign last winter to focus specifically on mobilizing young voters. A former March for Our Lives organizer, Levenson is emblematic of many Gen Zers who got involved with activism after Parkland and cut their teeth in politics organizing during former President Donald Trump’s administration.
"In a race this close, young voters can absolutely be the difference. We're seeing great early numbers but this race is far from over, so if you haven't voted yet, please do. So much is at stake in this election for young people — our reproductive freedom, affordable housing, our climate, student loan relief, our very democracy,” Levenson said Sunday in an email statement to Teen Vogue.
The Harris-Walz campaign’s youth vote engagement strategy has included a Students for Harris-Walz operation on college and high school campuses, inviting more than 200 content creators to the Democratic National Convention to reach young people through social media, back-to-school campus efforts, a Youth Vote Week of Action around National Voter Registration Day with an emphasis on campuses in swing states and historically Black colleges and universities, and an early vote tour featuring high-profile surrogates like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Maxwell Frost.
Frost, the only Gen Z member of Congress, has criss-crossed battleground states including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, and Nevada. At Arizona State University, he attended a “ballot bash,” where of-age students brought their ballots or ‘I Voted’ stickers to a bar before turning them in.
Outside the traditional campaign trail, the Harris-Walz campaign and supporting organizations have embraced the virality of this election. They’ve capitalized on endorsements from the likes of Taylor Swift, and invited creators to high-profile moments. Deja Foxx, an Arizona-based activist and content creator, had a speaking slot at the DNC in Chicago. Behind the scenes, she said, she described a unique level of “access” to the political process “in a way that feels really unique and different.” And with a slate of social accounts ranging from Harris and Walz’s personal accounts to Kamala HQ, she said, “they’ve empowered creators…by giving us a diverse option of what we can clip, stitch, share.”
Foxx said she’s impressed at the amount of people who have spent time, energy, and creativity spreading the message of this campaign.”
Some organizers have remained skeptical about the campaign, telling Teen Vogue that celebrity endorsements and memes matter far less than policy. They take issue with Harris’ embrace of fracking, unwavering support for Israel amid the war in Gaza, and support for more immigration enforcement.
But Harris’ strong stance on reproductive access and proposals to expand affordable housing — as well as the antipathy many young voters feel for Trump — have earned her support from many in this demographic. Recent events like a Kamala HQ pop-up at New York Fashion Week party and a Swifties for Kamala event in Philadelphia have merged culture and politics; with display of Plan B/birth control and Whac-A-Mole with “weird policies” like banning abortion or IVF, organizers sought to come up with different ways of engaging potential voters with actual policies.
On the early vote numbers, Foxx added, “I feel hopeful that women are not playing around this election cycle.”
Beyond campaign-affiliated efforts, outside organizations — including some that are nonpartisan — have been hard at work turning out young voters. To boost early voting, the nonpartisan Black Girls Vote organization held events at Bowie State University in Maryland, the Community College of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, Delaware State University, and Hampton University . The left-leaning NextGen America helped get young people to early voting locations with buses, ballot education on campuses, and partnerships with the NAACP. And Rise, which is focused on supporting democracy and reducing the cost of higher education, has deployed on-the-ground organizers on campuses across the country.
“During the early voting period we not only mobilize students on campuses through fun activations, but we also met them at music festivals within the cities and states we organize, in the clubs promoting early voting, and literally knocking on their doors,” said Mary-Pat Hector, Rise’s CEO.
“Young people are engaged and excited about the election. I think on CNN and MSNBC and Fox News people painted this photo that young people weren’t going to be as engaged in this election, as they do every election,” she said. “And we’re showing them that we’re going to be the deciding factor as we always are.”
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