A Blue Tsunami without young voters?

I’ve written a lot in this newsletter about my anxiety that, since 2024, the only people who seem truly engaged in the grassroots “resistance” to the Trump administration are the 60-year-olds attending No Kings protests and sharing Heather Cox Richardson’s posts on Facebook. Those older, politically engaged voters have almost single-handedly powered the rise of the new anti-MAGA media ecosystem, from YouTube to Substack and Meidas Touch to the Bulwark. It’s also a near certainty that all of them will show up to vote in November, because older, college-educated voters generally make up a larger share of the midterm electorate than they do in presidential years.

While those voters may be central to Democratic victories next month, turning a small blue wave into a Blue Tsunami will require other, less-engaged groups to turn out as well, and that will be no small feat. Voters under 30 typically make up a small share of any midterm electorate, just 12% in 2018 and 10% in 2022, according to Catalist. So my question is this: are Gen Z voters paying attention to this election cycle, and are they actually going to vote? To find out, I caught up with independent journalist Rachel Janfaza, who writes The Up and Up newsletter on Gen Z’s civic engagement, to learn what she’s hearing from young voters both online and off.

Kyle Tharp: Young voters typically make up a much smaller share of the electorate in midterms than in presidential years. What are you hearing this cycle, and do you see signs that young people are more energized than usual?

Rachel Janfaza: We put out a Gen Z youth voter roadmap that was the result of a series of nine focus groups that we did with young people from May to August. We spoke to more than 70 young people ages 17 to 33 in 28 states. One of my biggest takeaways was a prediction around the possibility of a lower youth voter turnout than we’ve seen in other midterm elections in which Gen Z’s been eligible to vote, so 2018 and 2022. And I’m really concerned about youth voter turnout in November.

In 2018, we saw a whole wave of new voters who came of age against the backdrop of Me Too and then March For Our Lives, and it was sort of the first post-Trump referendum. This was when you had every celebrity posting about voting, and it was very much like you posted your “I voted” sticker on your Instagram. It was just very zeitgeisty and in the culture. And then in 2022, it was post-Dobbs, it was about reproductive healthcare access, and that galvanized another new wave of young voters, and also there was sort of this referendum on Republicans after January 6th.

The difference in those two election cycles was that there was something really tangible and frightening about gun violence and about abortion access that motivated young people in particular, whereas today, the central theme is economic anxiety. It’s interwoven into every aspect of their life, but it doesn’t feel as reactionary of a force. I worry that it’s more of an omnipresent concern rather than something that is happening as an immediate threat. And so I just don’t know if that’s going to mobilize voters in the same way.

Also, the culture has shifted. In 2018, certainly, and to a certain extent in 2022, there was still some novelty to voting in the Trump era. Today, that just doesn’t exist because he’s been in power for so long, and he’s defined young people’s political consciousness the entire time they’ve been paying attention. I think that people are just tired of feeling like they might vote and nothing changes.

Gen Z is just tired of the Trump conversation, and running on “I’m not Donald Trump” is no longer effective. Young people know Trump’s not on the ballot this election cycle, and so as much as everyone tries to make him be on the ballot, including Republicans, he’s not. It doesn’t feel as urgent when the contrast is making money and being able to afford one’s life. If on election day young people haven’t voted and they’re weighing, “Am I gonna go to work today? Am I gonna go to my class, or am I gonna go to the polls?” They’re not going to the polls. They’re going to go and do the things they need to get done in order to get by.

Kyle Tharp: Which issues are young voters talking about most right now, and do you notice any gap between what they care about online and what comes up in person? What aspects of costs/affordability? Housing?

Rachel Janfaza: The headline of my report was that this is “the everyday election,” where we’re moving past the culture war and into a set of common issues that are uniting all young people. Identity politics can kind of feel like a luxury when you can’t afford your life. We’re really just hearing the main concerns of inflation, AI, the economy more broadly, war, corruption, to be really uniting young people across the board.

One thing we hear a lot in our focus groups is a frustration with the binary of having to choose between two parties. Something that’s underrated about Gen Z is that their views are nuanced, and they might have some beliefs from one party and some beliefs from another, and feel frustrated that they have to choose between the two. Gen Z is 56% independent, according to Gallup data, and more likely to say they’re independent than millennials when they were their age. Gen Z bucks the status quo in every aspect of their lives, and politics is no different.

Kyle Tharp: Who is doing the most serious work to turn out young voters this year, on either side of the aisle? Which organizations, candidates, or campaigns have built youth outreach into their programs, and which ones are young voters responding to?

Rachel Janfaza: I just don’t see it happening the way that we used to see it, to be quite honest. I would mention More Perfect Union. They’re growing [on YouTube] at a rate outpacing Turning Point, which I think is really interesting. I think the reason why they’ve had success is because they’re laser focused on economic issues and jobs and AI, and that is what is resonating with young people right now. They’ve been hosting these town hall situations, and we’ve seen young people showing up. I know they did one with Angie Nixon and Maxwell Frost, and one with AOC in Ithaca. They’re not the only ones, but just seeing the young people who are showing up at their events has been interesting to watch.

In terms of campaigns, I did a focus group with Michigan voters, mostly on the day of the Michigan primary, and certainly we heard support for Abdul El-Sayed and some excitement there around his campaign. James Talarico’s name comes up in a lot of our focus groups, from people not just in Texas but across the country. I think he has done a good job of breaking through and has been one of the only candidates this cycle to really blend culture and politics. Obviously, we saw Mamdani do that really successfully [in New York]. We saw Trump do that really successfully. But this cycle, we haven’t seen as much of that, and I think he’s a good example. The other candidate who, of course, is going viral and really just seems to be having a moment is Jon Ossoff.

With each of these candidates, they have an effective social media presence, and it seems that they’re resonating in their states. I’m not necessarily so tapped into their youth voter engagement game. But I kind of think that what they’re doing well flies in the face of what has been conventional wisdom about Gen Z in the past few years. In reality, young voters have the same priorities and concerns as all other voters. They care about the economy, they care about the cost of living and affordability. In some cases, it can feel a little bit patronizing when it’s like, “Okay, kids, let me talk to you about the issues that matter to you.” Part of why they’re resonating with young people is because their campaigns are made for the digital age. They’re very well-branded and digitally savvy, and they’re talking to young people like they’re normal people.

Kyle Tharp: Do you see young men and young women behaving differently this cycle? You talk a lot about the two groups of Gen Z, the younger vs. older cohorts. Are their different political behaviors a factor for engagement this cycle?

Rachel Janfaza: I’ve written about this a bit, or more than a bit. While certainly I don’t expect the gender gap to have evaporated, I do think that we’re seeing more similarities in the issues that both younger Gen Zers and older Gen Zers care about, but also in what young men and young women care about. I still believe we will see a gender gap, but I suspect it will be smaller than what it was in 2024.

Gen Z writ large, they’re super swingy. This is a generation that was raised at the speed of the internet, that is super used to instant gratification. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Gen Z’s politics kind of ping-ponging back and forth when they’re not getting what they want, and they then vote for the other party or swing towards the other party. The other piece of this is that there actually needs to be candidates that pull them in, otherwise they’re just gonna tune out writ large, which is some of the concern I have about low youth voter turnout.

I think it’s going to mean there’s a shakeup in terms of what the party stratification looks like. I don’t think we know exactly quite yet how that will shake out as Gen Z matures and gets older, but I’m hesitant to believe that they will fall in line as every other generation has, because to date, they do not have a track record of doing that.

Tomorrow Together, the new Democratic political action committee focused on helping candidates better communicate on AI issues, launched its first wave of midterm advertising in key battleground states and districts. They’re hitting Republican House candidates in WI-3, AZ-6, MI-7 and PA-8 with $4 million behind variations of the below ad:

“If Democrats win these races, it’ll send the message that candidates who speak to voters’ AI anxiety are winners – and candidates who ignore it will lose,” said Tomorrow Together co-founder Rob Flaherty in a statement. “We are playing to win these races. We are also testing out political arguments that will help Democrats nationwide in future cycles as anxieties about AI grow beyond the data center issue.”

Last week, I asked you to weigh in on whether a big, beautiful, blue tsunami is really coming in November. The results are in, and it turns out we have some pessimists in the audience. Around 90 of you (all very smart people!) took the poll, and nearly two-thirds said the media’s early declaration of victory for Democrats is overhyped. Is that just lingering trauma from trusting the polls a little too much in past election cycles? Maybe, but this morning in his Message Box newsletter, Dan Pfeiffer argues that whether or not you believe the polls, Republicans sure do, as evidenced by their heavy investments in ruby-red House districts and Senate races like those in Kansas, South Carolina, and Nebraska.