Voters wait in line to cast their ballots at a polling place in Scottsdale, Arizona on Nov. 5.
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In past years, voters under 30 have proved essential on the margins, especially for Democrats, where even minimal shifts in support can decide an election.
It was a group that Vice President Harris had hoped would be part of her winning coalition this year. Instead, she underperformed, and President-elect Trump made gains.
Since 2008, winning Democratic candidates have received at least 60% support from young voters, but Harris did not meet that threshold, getting 54%, according to early exit polls.
It was a loss especially pronounced in the blue wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – where the vice president’s margins dropped significantly from President Biden’s commanding leads four years ago.
Michigan had the most sizable change. Harris and Trump received equal shares – 49% to 49% – of youth support in the state, a sobering 24-point drop from 2020.
Young voters prioritized pocketbook issues
After years of Trump hammering home his agenda, Harris had just over 100 days to present an alternative option, and it’s unclear how much broke through to young Americans during that time.
A month before Election Day, the final youth-focused poll from the University of Chicago pointed to a potential information gap. While nearly 80% of those under 40 said they “pretty much already know” what they need to about Trump, just 57% felt that way about Harris.
John Della Volpe has been studying youth politics for more than two decades and previously worked for Biden’s 2020 campaign. He argued the election results point to disconnects in how Harris appealed to young people on issues – notably around the economy.
“From the earliest focus groups I conducted this year, there was this innate sense that younger people’s personal finances were better and would be better under a Trump administration,” said Della Volpe, who serves as the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics.
“Nothing the Democrats seemed to do, over the course of the last year, really changed that perspective,” he added.
Harris made protecting access to abortion a central part of her campaign. It’s an issue that has galvanized young voters to turn out for Democrats in recent elections.
However, in this election, voters under 30 were most likely to say the economy and jobs were top of mind, with the issue of abortion as a far second, according to early data from the Associated Press.
Trump won a majority of those who chose the economy as their top concern.
The gender gap was more pronounced among young voters
Trump made significant gains among young men, according to the AP’s exit polling, winning 56% of the vote, compared to 2020, when he won just 41%.
To Della Volpe, it’s part of a trend he has been watching for years, where a significant number of young men, especially those who have grown up with Trump, feel disconnected from the modern Democratic Party.
“They’re telling us in our surveys and our focus groups that the Democratic Party doesn’t speak to them. They’re choosing not to be affiliated with it. This is something that you can’t turn around in 30 days or 100 days,” he said. “To do this takes years of investment. Donald Trump made that investment. And I think much of that playing field was seeded by Democrats.”
Young women, on the other hand, did break for Harris. She won the group by 18 points – though still by a margin that was lower than four years ago.
Comparing the Harris and Trump vibes
Before Biden dropped out of the presidential race, he had largely lost his footing with young voters and was suffering in the polls. When Harris took over the ticket, she saw a boost in support. It’s something the campaign tried to channel moving forward, both online and in person, which included embracing the viral meme culture around her candidacy.
That said, though Harris had both a student-organizing program and a large social media presence to connect with young Americans, as Election Day got closer, her polling numbers were still falling short of Biden’s 2020 standing with this group.
For Trump, his youth outreach stayed mainly online.
Over the summer, he was the only major Republican who joined TikTok – where he grew a follower count that now stands at 14 million, higher than Harris, who has 5 million followers. Trump also did a number of extended interviews on some of the top podcasts in the country, many popular among young men.
It was all part of a youth strategy Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk told NPR was handily achieved.
“The goal was, of course, to lose by less,” said Kirk, the head of Turning Point USA, which focuses on getting young people engaged in conservative politics. “But in the last couple of weeks, we were whispering to each other that there might be something bigger.”
Turning Point’s advocacy organization, which doesn’t have a youth-only focus, was one of several outside groups that were tapped by the Trump campaign to run its on-the-ground organizing work.
Kirk added that Trump’s connection with young voters goes past traditional appeals on political topics.
“They just want to live in the same country as their parents. I don’t know if that’s a social issue or an economic issue,” he said. “They want a nice life, and they feel it slipping away.”
“It’s more, dare I say, a vibe than anything else,” he added, alluding to the Harris campaign. “For an entire campaign that was built on vibes, they certainly didn’t read the room.”
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