Happy hours. Movie nights. Parties.
Campaigns and political parties are leaning in on events-based strategies to court young voters — who are notorious for low turnout especially relative to seniors — as mail ballots go out and early voting is set to begin Saturday. The Harris campaign is bringing younger surrogates to bars; the Trump campaign is having influencers open at rallies.
In Nevada, more than 550,000 people younger than 35 are registered to vote, representing more than a quarter of the entire electorate, per the secretary of state’s September voter registration statistics. Voters younger than 25 make up nearly 11 percent of active registered voters.
It’s a group whose net impact can — and has — swung elections.
Campaigns of both parties have reason to believe that young voters will make up a critical part of their coalitions come November. The Harvard Institute of Politics’ national youth poll, released in September, found that Vice President Kamala Harris has a 31-point lead with voters younger than 30. But the Trump campaign believes young voters are worthy of outreach as well, and is focusing on young men and economic issues, which young voters, like the general electorate, consistently rank as their top priority.
But as they deploy resources toward young voter outreach and canvassing, campaigns have to consider the age-old question about investing time in this demographic: Will they vote?
Young voters registered their highest-ever turnout numbers in 2020. In Nevada, voters younger than 29 made up 18 percent of the electorate and preferred now-President Joe Biden by a 32-percentage-point margin — the benchmark Harris will be measured by.
In the 2022 midterm, the Tufts Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) found that young voters chose Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) by a 21-percentage-point margin, delivering her 27,000 net votes en route to her victory by fewer than 8,000. Tufts CIRCLE also found that 24.5 percent of eligible voters younger than 29 turned out in Nevada — about average compared to other states and a slight dropoff from the 2018 midterm.
Like Nevada as a whole, automatic voter registration has expanded the number of active registered young voters — and decreased each party’s vote share. In September 2020, voters younger than 35 were about 39 percent Democrat and 21 percent Republican.Today, Democrats only have 27 percent of the under-35 vote.
But Republicans have not gained either, now encompassing 17 percent. Instead, about 48 percent of young voters — nearly half — are nonpartisan. While there are nearly 80,000 new young voters, much of that expansion owes to automatic voter registration and the explosion of nonpartisans, meaning campaigns have to decide whether to focus on registered members of their parties or try to recruit unaffiliated voters who are typically lower-propensity voters in an age group that already is low-propensity.
Republicans — and the Trump campaign — are going after those voters across age groups. They’re trying to identify people who may have voted Republican in the past but don’t always vote.
In particular, the campaign is homed in on young men. Former President Donald Trump has appeared on numerous social media channels with figures whose audience skews younger and male — including podcaster Theo Von, YouTuber Logan Paul and streamer Adin Ross.
The Trump campaign has had influencers speak at rallies and make pro-Trump content across various platforms. Harris, meanwhile, made a podcast appearance of her own on Call Her Daddy, an advice podcast with a large contingent of young women listeners. And she’s released some economic policies geared specifically at younger voters, including $25,000 in down payment support for first-time homebuyers.
Democrats believe their message continues to resonate with younger voters, especially on issues such as abortion and climate change — it’s just a matter of reaching them where they are and ensuring they vote. The Trump campaign is doubling down on the economy, working to tie cost-of-living concerns to the Democratic administration.
In the state
On the ground in Nevada, the Democratic Party is working to mobilize voters on college campuses and in young professional spaces. In conversations, they’re emphasizing abortion rights — a popular issue among Nevadans broadly — and down-payment assistance. And they’re trying to improve voter education on Biden initiatives that appeal to younger voters, including climate investments and efforts to cancel student loans.
Those events can be happy hours, parties or putting together abortion aftercare kits, in the case of one Young Democrat event last December.
“People think of Young Dems, and, at least in my experience, really thought that it was people sitting together and kind of just listening to panels,” said Maria Nieto Orta, the president of Young Democrats of Nevada. “Being part of the leadership group, to do these nontraditional, exciting events was really huge for me.”
Much media coverage of college students has focused on campus protests against the Biden administration’s Israel policy. Anti-war campus protests rocked college campuses in the spring.
But organizers in Nevada don’t believe young voters are solely motivated by any single issue.
“Young people as a whole have a lot of issues that they really care about,” said Tanner Hale, the executive director of Young Democrats of Nevada.
And the Harris campaign points to polling showing its candidate switch has helped bring young voters critical of Biden — or just unenthusiastic about the election — back into the fold.
Nieto Orta also said Harris’ personal story — and its appeal to young voters of color — should not be discounted.
“At the [Democratic National Convention], when she spoke about her mom, she was describing her mom as a 5-foot brown woman with an accent,” she said. “My mom is a 5-foot brown woman with an accent. To see the possibility of seeing myself reflected in who will — fingers crossed — be our president, [has] kept me motivated.”
To boost turnout, the state party and Harris campaign plans to host events at early voting locations near UNLV, College of Southern Nevada and Nevada State University in order to motivate young voters to turn out early. Much of their organizing has been themed around events, such as a happy hour earlier in the cycle with Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL), the youngest member of Congress, or a climate forum with Kennedy scion Jack Schlossberg.
Even Republicans have acknowledged that issues such as abortion can be powerful motivators. Pauline Lee, a former president of the Nevada Republican Club, is working this cycle to turn out Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Republicans. She said young AAPI voters often have it ingrained in them that they should be Democrats, and it can be difficult to try and change minds.
“Some of the younger Asian women, they’ve been kind of brainwashed in college about ‘my body, my vote,’” Lee said, referring to abortion.
But she also believes that an economic argument can make headway with younger voters, particularly those who have struggled to find jobs or afford housing. Lee knows — she has three kids younger than 30.
“They’re all saying the economy sucks,” Lee said. “They’re really unhappy.”
Republican groups, meanwhile, are also trying to canvass the vote on college campuses. The Trump campaign has been tabling at UNLV every week, according to a campaign official, and has a significant contingent of young volunteers who engage in peer-to-peer voter contact through door-knocking and phone banking. The campaign has identified cost-of-living concerns as a chief motivator for college students, and wants to translate that into votes for Trump.
Turning Point USA, the brainchild of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to recruit and mobilize young conservatives, has a chapter at UNR, where Kirk appeared last week. The chapter said more than 300 voters showed up to the event. At UNLV, the College Republicans chapter has partnered with the Trump campaign, hosting digital game nights and in-person events such as movie nights and social mixers to reach voters.
College Republican chapters at UNLV and UNR did not respond to interview requests.
Nieto Orta acknowledged that young men, particularly young men of color, may be intrigued by Trump, but she believes voter education can help keep those voters in the Democratic camp.
And she feels confident about the youth vote through the mechanism that Nevada Democrats have always relied on — superior organizing.
“We know, specifically in Nevada, that knocking on people’s doors and actually having that conversation is everything,” said Hale. “We especially learned in 2020 how there is no substitute for that. Republicans are just simply not knocking as many doors as we are.”
