President-elect Trump made clear inroads with young voters, who helped propel him to victory over Vice President Harris last week.
Harris ultimately won the majority of voters under 30, but by a far slimmer margin than Biden did in 2020. She won them by just six points — a quarter of the total support Biden had from them four years ago.
Trump, meanwhile, made clear gains with young white men and boosted his support with young Latino, Black and Asian voters. Republicans overseeing his outreach to that demographic point to his presence on social media and podcasts, as well as his “discussing actual issues instead of focusing on vibes,” as the reasons behind his success with the demographic.
Brilyn Hollyhand, chair of the RNC’s youth advisory council, said the “No. 1 issue” for young voters was the economy.
“That is what people voted for President Trump,” Hollyhand said. “That's why youth voters turned out in droves. They're frustrated. We understood that, and we hope that this can be something where their vote wasn't a one-time thing because Trump spoke to them, but that it's generational change for the party.”
During this election, Trump invested heavily in mobilizing young voters, especially younger male voters, with a focus on issues around masculinity and the economy.
According to Hollyhand, he and other younger Republicans urged Trump to use social media like Instagram and TikTok to speak to younger voters while countering Harris, who earlier in the campaign focused heavily on social media edits that went viral.
“She was just running a vibes campaign,” Hollyhand said. “With our posts, we would back that up with explaining detailed policies, because that's something that her side wasn't doing. Clearly, youth voters paid attention to policies and decided to not go with vibes but with the guy that actually has policies.”
Republicans have historically not spent considerable sums on winning over younger voters, writing them off as too liberal.
However, during this election cycle, a group of young conservatives convinced the GOP that Trump’s brand could resonate with younger male voters, many of whom feel isolated in the wake of the pandemic and have been struggling economically.
“There’s been a lot of groundwork laid by Republicans or more conservative actors this election cycle,” said Rachael Dziaba, a research team lead at the Harvard Institute of Politics. “I think the Trump campaign has been able to capitalize on, like, feelings of the invisibility, feelings of frustration not being able to afford a home, or, you know, afford groceries to reach these voters.”
Trump participated in interviews with podcasters like Joe Rogan and the NELK Boys, and younger male surrogates continually posted positive content about Trump on social media platforms, which appears to have made a difference.
“With Trump going on Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Theo Vaughn, Aiden Ross and the NELK boys, all of that really made a difference with people kind of seeing almost a democratizing thing of the president going on these shows, which kind of everyone watches and has a mass appeal,” said William Blathras, chair of Wisconsin’s college Republicans. “The Harris campaign did not do that, especially with, like, Joe Rogan, and I know having the offer to do so definitely helped sway young men towards President Trump like never before.”
The Trump campaign also relied on Turning Point USA, which hosted college campus events, while its leader, Charlie Kirk, continually posted content about Trump.
According to Andrew Cole, a Turning Point spokesperson, Kirk’s posts in the run-up to the election had millions of impressions across social media platforms, and in-person events sold out quickly, even on liberal college campuses.
Trump’s marked increase in the demographic diverged from polls of young voters carried out in the run-up to the election, which showed Harris winning the demographic comfortably by double digits.
Young voters are the only demographic that Harris appears to have won this election; however, even within that group, she lost support across the board.
An analysis of The Associated Press, Fox and MSNBC exit polls show that Trump won young white voters 54 to 44. Biden won the demographic by six points in 2020. With Latino voters, Harris won by 20 points, decreasing the democratic advantage in 2020 by 30 points. Among Black and Asian voters, support for Democrats fell by close to 15 points.
While these polls predicted a shift toward Trump among male voters, those male voters also said they were far less likely to vote during the election than Harris’s base of support.
According to Anil Cacodcar, one of the leaders of Harvard’s Institute of Politics youth poll, which is the largest in the nation, that ended up not being fully true.
“It looks like he ended up winning almost all of the undecided voters from our October survey,” Cacodcar said.
Democratic youth organizers had also been raising the alarm about younger male voters for much of the cycle, with David Hogg, one of the founders of the March For Our Lives movement, warning in October that if Democrats lost the election part of the issue would be because "young men have left the Democratic party."
“We’re hesitant to even talk about what young men are dealing with because, you know, men have been with the conversation for literally thousands of years,” Hogg told The Hill last month. “I think that anytime that there’s been a conversation historically about like, the inclusion of men, it’s meant exclusion of other people, in particular women. And we need to have a new conversation about that.”
