Growing turnout where there’s room to grow
It’s happened before. The final, low-prestige panels of the Netroots Nation conference — late Saturday afternoon when people are already leaving — turn out to be the most interesting.
“You cannot win without the youth vote” featured observations from Voters of Tomorrow panelists:
Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, many national news sources suggested that the youth would not turn out. In reality, the election saw the second-highest youth turnout in the last 30 years. Gen Z voted overwhelmingly for pro-democracy candidates. Without the youth vote, the “red wave” may have become a reality.
The Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade was the animating issue in 2022, as well as in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in 2023. While the youth vote has been increasing, 2022 was the first when over half of Gen Z could vote, the panel agreed. They predict even higher turnout in 2024.
Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost, 26, told a ballroom crowd earlier that Democrats must work to make Gen Z’s future a hopeful one of abundance, not retrenchment, if they want their engagement.
Campaigns now have to shift their perspective on the youth vote, not simply focus on voter history and voting propensity for which there has been, until recently, little data for Gen Z.
Best messenger to GenZ is another member of GenZ
To reach younger voters, campaigns must have young people in the campaigns empowered to do outreach to young people. It’s their future on the line.
That outreach cannot happen just in the last three months ahead of an election. That effort should include digital channels, of course, but also constant presence on campuses. The challenge there is the constant turnover in student populations. Candidates and officials should regularly visit college campuses, and even high schools in states where 17 year-olds can register if they’ll be 18 by Election Day.
Invest in youth content creators/influencers. There is an inherent level of trust among youth with youth. Give them information to distribute, then step out of the way; let them create the content. It’s what they do best. If they have a million followers, TRUST THEM to push out your information in way that’s most effective. (Even if the campaign doesn’t “get it.”)
Creativity and fun are the keys to reaching Gen Z. Voters of Tomorrow recounted distributing condoms on a Texas campus. They carried a QR code and a message: “Fuck Fascism”.
Finally, they suggested, invest in young content creators. Trust them to deliver. There needs to be an intergenerational infrastructure to support them. Young people should lead but they shouldn’t have to do it alone.
Gen Z does not care much about parties, the panel agreed. That’s evident in the data a colleague generated for independent voters (UNAfiliateds in NC) in NC for 2022. The green curve above represents UNA registration by age (18-100). The green bar graph below shows actual UNA voter turnout for 2022. The youth vote (below 45, for example) may be increasing, but it has plenty of room to grow. They tend to vote Democrat.
Our opponents know this. That’s why they work so hard to suppress it.