With young voters among the many constituencies that could turn the vote toward either presidential candidate, Democrats are leaning on some of its highest-profile youth advocates to get out the vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Four days before Election Day, the only Gen Z member of Congress, Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., is campaigning on college campuses and at concerts in his home state of Florida while reproductive rights advocate Deja Foxx is knocking on doors and generating content for social media in Arizona.
“I always tell people Project 2025 is Florida 2024. Project 2025, we see some of this going on in the South right now,” Frost said during a press call with leading Gen Z activists Friday, including mass-shooting survivor and gun control activist David Hogg.
Frost said a Florida law that allows people to carry concealed weapons without a permit is the reason two people were killed and another six were injured in Orlando on Halloween night.
Hogg said Project 2025, which Democrats see as a template for a Trump presidency, would eliminate red flag laws that take guns out of the hands of those who could do harm and get rid of tools used by law enforcement that stop criminals from being able to purchase guns.
“We need to do everything we can to prevent this Trump presidency,” Frost said, adding that the Biden-Harris administration has “been able to make big gains for young Americans from gun violence and many different issues and want to continue on that path of progress.”
Frost is currently campaigning at the University of Central Florida, where he said students are waiting to be asked to organize, to volunteer and to vote.
“It’s not about inviting people to your table but going to theirs,” he said. “We go to places of culture: concerts and different events to reach young people who might not care about politics.
“At every event that we’ve been at, there’s been a pretty large contingent of students or people who have never been to a political event before,” he said. “When I speak with them about what issues brought them to the table, we hear about a lot of the issues that we hear about today: gun violence, reproductive justice, access to abortion, the climate crisis, the economy.”
A GenForward survey conducted by the University of Chicago in October found inflation was the most important issue among voters aged 18 to 26, followed by economic growth, reproductive rights, poverty, immigration and threat to American democracy.
A Harvard Youth Poll released last week found Democratic candidate Kamala Harris leads GOP candidate Donald Trump among young voters 60% to 32%. Harris’ support is strongest among young women, where she has a 30-point lead against Trump.
Her lead against Trump among young voters shrinks to 9% across the seven key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
According to the Harvard poll, Harris is strongest on abortion rights and strengthening the working class, while Trump is perceived as stronger on the Israel-Hamas war.
There are about 52.6 million people between the ages of 18 and 29 in the United States who make up almost 16% of the population. In 2020, about half of young voters cast ballots.
According to the University of Florida Election Lab, of the 66.8 million voters who have cast ballots so far this election cycle, 7.6% have been 18- to 25-year-olds.