CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — North Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Anderson Clayton opened a pack of shiny stickers and handed them out to young volunteers preparing to canvass for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
The stickers are tie-dye and read: “Donald Trump is weird.”
This is a reference to how Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, quickly became an Internet darling for not only calling GOP nominee Donald Trump and the GOP’s fixation on banning books and abortions “downright ‘weird,'” also Walz’s enthusiasm for Charli XCX’s recent album “Brat.” The pop singer supported Harris’ campaign, in a social media post where Charli XCX said “kamala IS a brat.”
Clayton, a Gen Zer who, at 26, is the youngest state party chair in the country, knows how crucial young people’s votes will be not only in this election, but in future ones.
“I feel like my job as a state party (chairman) in the next election cycles is going to be to help educate our young people… because once they have the educational aspect to it, they say, ‘I know who to vote for,’ because I know who cares about my best interest,” she said in an interview with States Newsroom.
But winning the youth vote also means getting those voters to actually fill out their ballots and overcome their dismay over the political process and, for Democrats, issues like the Hamas-Israel war. Some people give up party affiliation completely, say political experts. North Carolina, a battleground state, provides a microcosm of how partisans and others are trying to attract young adults to the polls.
Matthew Trott, president of the College Republicans at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he is focused on educating young conservatives about the candidates who received unopposed votes and making sure they make the final push.
“A lot of young people have registered, it’s just about getting them to vote,” he said.
Fight for presidential victory
Wearing her iconic lime green “brat” shirt with the words “Demo(brat)” written on it, Clayton used “weird” stickers to encourage students to listen to her talk about presidential and presidential candidates and voting in November, in hopes that they would change the color North Carolina state in blue.
It’s a feat that hasn’t been achieved since President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.
In the last presidential election, Trump carried the state by 1.4 percentage points, or about 75,000 votes.
Clayton said the gap could be plugged with those 75,000 votes by attracting different coalitions to parliament, including young and rural voters.
“I think there are so many communities that haven’t been included in previous election cycles and just because they weren’t organized doesn’t mean they weren’t there,” she said at a canvassing event organized by the South Asian Community Commission at the end of September.
Her trip across the state to about 30 colleges was aimed at registering students to vote before Oct. 11, the last day you could register online or by mail to vote in the upcoming election. Voter registration in person is possible during early voting, which runs from October 17 to November 2.
Clayton said she registered about 150 students to vote before the college tour was cut compact after Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina.
While state residents worked to recover, the Republican Party and the North Carolina Republican National Committee sued the North Carolina State Board of Elections after the board approved UNC-Chapel Hill’s request to allow students to apply cell phone IDs as a valid form of identification to register to vote.
A Wake County Superior Court judge ruled in favor of UNC, but an appeals court overturned that decision, meaning that UNC students can no longer apply their mobile IDs to register to vote.
Big problems
Clayton said young voters are very practical.
She touched on issues that her students told her were vital to them: abortion access, cost of living, rent caps and wage increases.
“I think people don’t give young people enough credit for how much they care and would be interested if information was presented to them in this way,” she said.
According to them, Harris has increased support among young voters compared to the period when President Joe Biden was still in the race a national survey conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics which conducted a survey in September among people aged 18 to 29 across the country.
Biden had a 13-point lead over Trump among likely voters in the spring poll. In September, Harris had a 31-point lead among likely voters.
Clayton said young voters helped Harris’s rise after she topped the ballot in July. Biden suspended his campaign after a disastrous debate performance that rocked Democrats.
“I don’t think support for Kamala Harris would have grown as much if it weren’t for young voters,” she said.
Biden gained the support of 59% of voters aged 18 to 29 in the 2020 presidential election, compared to 35% for Trump, according to Biden’s analysis of the 2020 electorate. Pew Research Center.
“Very pessimistic”
However, a recent Harvard poll found that just 56% of young people said they would vote, down from the 63% of young adults who said they would voting in September 2020.
Young voters, especially those still in college, face several barriers to casting ballots, according to Courtney Juelich, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.
“Young people, regardless of generation, take part in elections less often than older people, and much of this is due to how complicated our electoral system is and how much depends on the individual,” she said. “We have young people having to deal with this on their own, and all these different state regulations and a lot of young people going to school in another state. It just has such barriers to entry.”
Juelich added that it was the first time many young voters identify as independent. “They are very pessimistic about the political process,” she said.
Democrats also lost support and faced bulky criticism from young voters due to the Israel-Hamas war, which led to: According to the health ministry, more than 41,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza. Conflict created mass protests across campusopposing the war and calling for a ceasefire.
“They have a very different view of the Middle East than the older voting bloc in the Democratic Party and, of course, in the Republican Party, and that was one of Biden’s biggest concerns, that… he wouldn’t get excited about other policies, and then having that kind of stigma attached to him , in the case of young voters, which could completely sway the election,” Juelich said.
Plus the war in Gaza led to a disengaged movement, when Biden was still campaigning for re-election. Delegates sent from this movement to the DNC insisted that a Palestinian American speak at the conventionbut were rejected by Democrats.
There’s a knock on the door
For Eva Eapen, an 18-year-old sophomore political science student at UNC-Chapel Hill, not getting involved in the upcoming election was not an option.
Since the summer, he has spent weekends knocking on doors at Asian Americans Together in North Carolina, providing unbiased information about polling places and voter registration deadlines, as well as information about candidates ranging from the presidential ticket to local races.
“I think there’s so much more at stake in this election, I don’t think it’s a political election anymore, I think it’s literally about the integrity of the choices that our democratic institutions make,” she said.
Eapen is a registered freelance intern and communications intern for Josh Stein, who is running for governor of North Carolina as a Democrat.
Trott, head of the Republican Party at UNC, is a 20-year-old political science and public policy student. He said he is working to reach classic College Republican bases, such as religious organizations and Greek life.
He said some of the issues young Republicans are voting on include the economy and immigration.
“Many of us are very concerned about what we see as our open southern border and the threats it poses, and I know many of us hope that with Trump’s second presidency he will be able to take a stronger stance on this issue and hopefully alleviate some of those issues,” Trott said.
Trott, who will be casting his first vote in the presidential election, said he worries about what the economy will look like after graduation if Harris wins the White House.
“Many of us are very concerned that the current post-graduation economic climate, which, if Harris wins, will be during her term, will be extremely unfavorable to us and will make it much more difficult for us to start a business,” he said.
Recent vote By Associated Press-NORC Public Affairs Research Center showed that the economy is the most vital issue for voters, with voters slightly more supportive of Trump’s handling of the economy.
Cook’s Oct. 2 political report with Amy Walters assessed Harris and Trump dead heat in North Carolina, at 49%.
Although North Carolina is a battleground state, Trott believes Trump will easily defeat the state.
“I think he’s managed to keep his base intact,” Trott said. “His supporters did not leave him here.”
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