In the days following President Joe Biden exit from the presidential race and endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, Gen Z voters jumped to social media to share coconut tree and “brat summer” memes.
“Brats for Harris.” “We need a Kamalanomenon.” “Gen Z feels the Kamalove.” The tags reflect a stark shift in tone for a generation that has voiced feeling left behind by the Democratic party.
Youth-led progressive organizations have warned for months that Biden had a problem with young voters, pleading with the president to work more closely with them to refocus on the issues most important to younger generations or risk losing their votes.
With Biden out of the race, many of these young leaders are now hoping Harris can overcome his faltering support among Gen Z and harness a new explosion of energy among young voters.
Since July 21, statements have poured out from youth-led organizations across the country, including in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, as leaders thanked Biden for stepping aside and celebrated the opportunity to organize around a new candidate. On July 26, a coalition of 17 youth-led groups endorsed Harris.
“This changes everything,” said Zo Tobi, director of donor organizing for the national youth organizing group Movement Voter Project, when he heard the news that Biden was dropping out of the race and endorsing Harris. “The world as it is suddenly shifted into the world as it could be.”
As the campaign enters a new phase, both Harris and her Republican rival, convicted felon Donald Trump, have presented messages aimed at younger voters who could prove decisive in some of the most hotly contested states.
John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, who has worked with President Biden, said the “white-hot energy” among young people is something he had not seen since former President Barack Obama’s campaign.
He described the dynamic as “a combination of the hopefulness we saw with Obama and the urgency and fight we saw after the Parkland shooting.”
In many ways, it was the first time many young people felt heard and felt like their actions could have an impact on politics, he and several young leaders said.
“It’s reset this election in profound ways,” he said. “People, especially young people, for so long, for so many important reasons have been despondent about politics, despondent about the direction of the country. It’s weighed on them. And then they wake up the next morning, and it seems like everything’s changed.”
About 6 in 10 adults under 30 voted for President Biden in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, but his ratings with the group have dipped substantially since then, with only about a quarter of the group saying they had a favorable opinion of him in the most recent AP-NORC poll, conducted before Biden withdrew from the race.
That poll, along with polls from The New York Times/Siena and from CNN that were conducted after President Biden dropped out, suggested that Harris started off with somewhat more favorable ratings than Biden among young adults.
Sunjay Muralitharan, vice president of College Democrats of America, said it felt like a weight was lifted off his chest when Harris entered the race.
Despite monthly coalition calls between youth-led groups and the Biden campaign, Muralitharan spent months worrying about how Biden would fare among young voters as he watched young people leave organizations such as the College Democrats and Young Democrats to join more leftist groups.
College Democrats issued statements and social media posts encouraging the party to prioritize young people and to change course on the war in Gaza and have “worked tirelessly to get College Dems programming” at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. But they received limited outreach in return, Muralitharan said.
A Harris campaign represents an opportunity to move in a new direction, he said. The Vice President has shown her vocal support for issues important to young voters such as climate change and reproductive rights, Muralitharan said, adding that she may also be able to change course and distance herself from Biden’s approach to the war in Gaza.
“The perpetual roadblock we’ve run into is that Biden is the lesser of two evils and his impact on the crisis in Gaza,” he said. “For months, we’ve been given this broken script that’s made it difficult for us to organize young voters. But that changes now.”
Santiago Mayer, executive director of the Gen Z voter engagement organization Voters of Tomorrow, said the Biden campaign “created an entirely new framework for operating with youth organizations” that can now be transitioned into supporting Harris’ campaign.
“Gen Z loves VP Harris, and VP Harris loves Gen Z,” he said. “So we’re ready to get to work for her.”
