Opinion about what 14 undecided young voters think after watching KAKamala Harris speak
The Turn of a Young Voter to Voting Era: Where Do We Stand? What Do We Need to Know? How Do We Want to Make the Campaign to Go Off the Grid?
The 24-year-old is the National Youth Engagement Director for Vice President Harris’s presidential campaign, a role she’s had since the beginning of the year when President Biden was seeking re-election. Her goal is to get young voters to the polls.
But as she addressed a room of Gen Z organizers last week at a coffee shop in Chicago, wearing a handful of friendship bracelets that said, ‘Kamala,’ ‘political girlie,’ and ‘voting era,’ there’s a new playing field.
Levenson said that it’s been great to see the attention and energy online. How do we harness that energy and how do we make sure that our energy isn’t wasted?
That’s a goal shared by many young organizers also working to rally youth support after a boost in enthusiasm for Harris among voters under 30 – the same demographic that supported Biden four years ago but soured on him over the past year.
It is a challenge to make that support stick given how Harris launched her campaign and how historically unreliable young voters are in consistently turning out to vote.
Levenson can already point to promising signs for the campaign’s organizing push. She has built a program for the Harris campaign to tap into, launching a nationwide student organizing program last spring that will start back up as students return to campus this fall.
She said that there has been a great influx of people into the campaign. “We’ve seen more sign-ups for our student program in the last few weeks than we had seen in the entirety of the time before. We’ve seen more folks signing up for our events. We’ve seen more folks applying for those jobs. We need to keep the energy up, and so do we.
A surge of viral moments online has helped Harris, on top of a rise in the polls. Her campaign is running with it, adopting some of the meme into their online organizing, and getting more active on social media, where they have seen a massive increase in engagement.
The crowd of young people erupted in cheers and chants as Tim Walz, the Minnesota Governor and Democratic Vice President nominee, took the stage.
Walz didn’t mince words when explaining the power young voters could have, especially in battleground states where the margins may be incredibly tight.
“It’s going to be won in the trenches,” he said. For the most part, it’s going to be won by your demographic. If we can turn you out and get you to vote, that’s how it’s going to be done. The first woman president of the United States is going to be you.
That excitement is something Blake Robinson, a 21-year-old delegate from Georgia, said he could feel as he got ready to head over to the convention center hours before Harris accepted the presidential nomination.
He said that they wanted the Democratic Party to be energy efficient. “We wanted some semblance of youthfulness and vigor and energy. I’m not sure if you’ve been to the convention hall, but there is no dull moment in that hall.
Organizers aligned with the ‘Uncommitted’ movement, which started during the Democratic primaries to protest President Biden’s response to the Israel-Hamas war, took issue with the DNC’s decision not to allow a Palestinian American to speak at the convention.
While the war is not an issue that young voters care about as much as other issues, it is still a concern and one that some progressive, Arab American and Muslim voters usually side with the Democrats.
“We know how much this issue impacts young people,” he explained. “Giving a Palestinian-American a place on this stage is going to be important. We need to make sure that we’re including everyone in our speaking lineup. We want to make sure people know that we care about everyone and all of the conflicts and issues.
Times Opinion began a project that followed a group of young undecided voters through the election, and we talked about Donald Trump with a wide-ranging discussion before the DNC. The group had opinions about Mr. Trump. The attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 was hard for many of them and they held Mr. Trump responsible. They described him as a traitor, a narcissist, and an unlikable person. Some worried he would fight another election loss.
They did a scale of 0 to 10 with zero being extremely negative and Ms. Harris did no better than a five. Mr. Trump got mostly fours and fives, and topped out with a seven.
If Ms. Harris was losing the battle against Mr. Trump in our first discussion, I thought she had a chance to win the war. I think of Bill Clinton, he was the candidate who had the best chance to make a persuasive impression with a larger group of Americans who were tuning into the race.
