Young voters helped elect Joe Biden in 2020. As his reelection campaign begins, key activists are apprehensive about endorsing the president and worried the administration may waste years of progress.
Biden’s 2020 campaign actively courted younger, progressive voters to rally the grassroots and heal party divisions from the 2016 election.
The White House and youth activists are at a crossroads more than three years later. Biden’s support ratings with 18-to-29-year-olds have plummeted as the president and legislative Democrats have kept some pledges but not others.
Young climate activists who helped build trust and excitement for a Biden presidency were horrified by the administration’s approval of a contentious Alaskan drilling project. The White House said that its legal options were limited since the Trump administration had approved the project. The incident has revived preexisting misgivings among allied youth voting groups.
Their leaders worried that Biden and senior aides seem increasingly determined to own the political center, even if it alienates this increasingly powerful voting bloc. Young voters have participated in record numbers in recent elections and organized a huge network of groups focused on climate, immigration, gun violence, student debt, health care, LGBTQ rights, and more.
We find it hard to sell. If your activists, who are expected to persuade others, are asking, “Are we convinced at all whether he’s doing a great job?”How can we persuade others?March for Our Lives member Noah Lumbantobing stated. Biden did well. He hasn’t used his bully pulpit enough.”
In more than a dozen interviews with organizers from leading youth groups, front-line activists, and young Democratic strategists and legislative aides, a portrait emerges of a hyper-engaged and idealistic generation that, unlike previous generations, has become remarkably savvy about how to use its power. Forged during Trump’s presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic, they are ardent opponents of the right’s political and cultural agenda—a reality that may ultimately prevail over Biden’s disappointment—but also determined to make leading Democrats, many of them five or six decades older, earn their support.
They said the Biden team is accessible and proactive in seeking their input. They stated conversations are often superficial and their recommendations are ignored.
“We don’t need help being convinced that the Republicans are the bad guys, and we need to fight against them,” said Sunrise Movement electoral director Michele Weindling. “We need to know why we’re voting against the right and for what.”
Kevin Munoz, Biden campaign spokesman, underlined the increase in youth voter turnout in 2020 and said the campaign will “work hard to earn every Americans’ vote by using innovative ways to reach them, and highlighting the stakes of this election.”
Munoz said, “There’s only one candidate in this race fighting – and delivering – on (the most important issues to young voters). “President Biden.”
NextGen, a young voter turnout group, endorsed Biden this week. “It is clear that Biden is not only listening to us, but is taking robust action to signal to young people across the country that unprecedented change is possible,” said NextGen PAC President Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez.
Rising youth vote
Democrats have touted youth voting potential for decades. Liberals predicted the 1972 electorate would lean left when the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18. Statistics showed otherwise. Youth attendance was average, and young Americans were not more liberal than their parents in the voting booth, as many feared.
Recent elections have changed that. Young voters are more liberal than their parents. Experts expect Gen-Z and Millennials—roughly 18–45-year-olds—to make up 40% of the vote by 2024. Democrats must focus more on topics that matter to younger Americans as older voters, from Generation X to Baby Boomers, increasingly vote conservative.
The Biden team and DNC are investing early in reaching such people. A campaign insider told CNN they called social media influencer managers last week following the news. A spokesman said the DNC is working with gun violence prevention groups “on a training series to engage young voters in schools and on campuses.”
John Della Volpe, polling director at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics and author of “Fight: How Gen Z Is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America,” said Biden is better with young voters now than four years ago, but he is not as strong as he was by Election Day.
“We started that summer of 2020 kind of where we are now, which is with a lot of young people questioning,” said Della Volpe, who took leave that year to assist the Biden campaign. I was certain that young people would react to his message, morals, and vision.
He said that Biden’s problem this time would be convincing young voters of Democrats’ successes, including the Inflation Reduction Act’s large green investments and executive initiatives to cancel up to $400 billion in student debt.
Della Volpe said a generation that has only experienced conflict and disagreement in Washington and the federal government has a mental challenge.
“You can’t assume younger people have the trust in the system that it’s ever worked,” he added. “You need two or three steps with this demographic group, where in other groups who’ve got a stronger connection with government and elections, maybe you can do it in one or two.”
Della Volpe and five Harvard Youth Poll students visited Washington this week to brief top advisers to Biden and staff on youth concerns, a practice that began under the Obama administration.
Advocates said abortion offered Biden the best chance to win over young and first-time voters. Tufts University’s CIRCLE reported 27% 18-to-29 turnout in 2022, the second highest midterm election percentage after 2018. Months after the US Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, numerous states voted on abortion. Young people helped elect a liberal state Supreme Court justice last month, who is anticipated to overturn Wisconsin’s abortion restriction with the court’s new left-leaning majority.
Before the April election, Project 72 WI director Teddy Landis, 25, led on-campus organizing. According to the group’s figures, Judge Janet Protasiewicz surpassed freshly reelected Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on campus, garnering national attention. He stated abortion, especially in a banned state, was the biggest worry.
“Abortion dominated the fall election. Spring brings an abortion election. “I was worried that if this is all we talk about, people will get sick of it,” Landis remarked. “People are not sick of talking about abortion and it really matters to them.”
He regretted that more young voters will face the impact of anti-abortion laws in the coming months, which will exacerbate that dynamic.
Republicans’ concurrent efforts to pass transgender kid legislation is producing a similar dynamic—sorrow and indignation at the real-life implications, but also a knowledge that the GOP may be overstepping and providing new electoral chances for Democrats.
This year, more than 400 anti-trans measures have been submitted in state legislatures, including many that would outlaw gender-affirming treatment for kids, specific materials, and school discussion of certain topics. Most 2024 Republican primary contenders advocate new federal laws and use anti-trans language.
Trump has called gender-affirming surgery for minors “child sexual mutilation,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has proposed a series of measures to make it harder for trans people to get health care, and last week, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman and social media influencer, “a guy dressing up like a girl making fun of women.”
Biden strongly opposes Republican state-level transgender youth rights restrictions. His administration wants a federal regulation change to ban “categorically” excluding trans pupils from gender-specific sports teams. Advocacy organizations opposed the attempt to let schools ban certain athletes.
“There’s one side that is trying to take away our rights, and there’s another side that has completely squandered any opportunity to enshrine our rights,” said non-binary activist Esmée Silverman, co-founder of Queer Youth Assemble. Silverman also chastised the White House and Democrats for failing to turn their two-year ruling trifecta on Capitol Hill into “a single piece of long-term solution” for transgender people after Republicans reclaimed the House in the midterms.
Biden has also supported the Equality Act, a federal measure that bans sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity discrimination in most areas of American life. Congress is split on the legislation. He signed an executive order in June 2022 ordering the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services to increase gender-affirming services and fight state anti-trans legislation.
At the signing, Biden told the youth, “Just be you.” You’re adored. Hear you. We understand. You belong.”
The college organizer, Landis, said the GOP assaults will backfire politically and that Biden had a significant chance to win over hesitant young people by not avoiding criticism.
He claimed young voters are likely to know a trans or non-binary person. “When they see these extremist Republicans talk about people they know in these crazy ways, that does a lot to repel them from the idea that they could even be someone they would vote for one day.”
A pivot?
Biden’s environment and immigration policies have drawn increasing criticism.
Climate Defiance, another youth-led group, disrupted White House senior advisor John Podesta’s address. They obstructed admission to the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner days later, demanding the president keep his promise to end fossil fuel exploitation on public property.
Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones, a 27-year-old Democrat who was thrown out of the body over a gun violence protest on its floor until the Nashville Metropolitan Council restored him, spoke at the weekend rally.
“I wanted to come out here and stand with you all,” Jones stated via a bullhorn. “We will keep fighting and stay with the people because we know our generation is dealing with the long-term implications of these decisions.”
Another young activist with a strong social media following told CNN that “the administration is listening” but that the Willow Project, a massive oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, and other fossil fuel economy expansions undermine other, significant gains.
“I appreciate all those efforts,” the activist said, “but if you approve the Driftwood Pipeline in Louisiana, exports for the Alaska LNG projects, two LNG projects in Texas, how are young people expected to see that you’re listening to us when you continue to approve projects similar to Willow?”
Young immigrants’ rights advocates dislike Biden’s presidency. The 2020 primary highlighted that difficult relationship, which continues. Asylum restrictions and border treatment by the government have increased mistrust.
United We Dream’s political director, Michelle Ming, praised Biden for extending access to the Affordable Care Act to DACA recipients, the Obama-era program that protects undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US before 16.
She said that move has been a lonely highlight for activists who believe Biden could more aggressively use his executive power to expand DACA and increase eligibility for Temporary Protected Status, which applies to immigrants who would face extreme hardship if forced to return home.
“I don’t think immigration has been his strong suit,” Ming remarked. “He hasn’t been bold enough on immigration. That’s a Democratic problem, not just his.”
Ming, like many organizers, said any Republican nominee would be reason enough to vote for the president. She said that persuasion is becoming harder.
“We first have to be honest, because young people detect bullsh*t really easily and hate that,” Ming remarked. “He hasn’t progressed as we wanted. However, he is not a fascist, White supremacist, or racist.
Biden’s reelection campaign may benefit from Republican animosity, especially in the MAGA camp.
“Gen Z recognizes that, although the Biden-Harris administration and our federal government at large has a lot of work to do, and there’s still a lot of work that our generation and the generations after us have, it’s better than Trump,” said 20-year-old Democrat Haley Taylor Schlitz, a Fort Worth suburb school board candidate. “Start there.”
According to CNN, New Georgia Project Action Fund organizing director Billy Honor is more thrilled about local contests in battleground states than the presidential election. His knocking-on-doors argument is more comprehensive for disillusioned voters.
Honor says, “The process is more important than the candidates.”
Math follows. Biden said the equation is straightforward.
No major mobilization needed. “You just need a really good number,” Honor remarked. “I think that’s possible, even in a climate where college students won’t be excited for Joe Biden like they were for Barack Obama.”