In battleground North Carolina, both parties struggle to turn out the youth vote  • North Dakota Monitor

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton opened a pack of shiny stickers and passed them out to young volunteers getting ready to canvass for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The stickers have a tie-dye color scheme that reads: “Donald Trump is weird.”

It’s a reference to how Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, quickly became an internet darling not only by calling Republican nominee Trump and the GOP’s fixation on banning books and abortion simply “weird,” but also Walz’s enthusiasm for the new Charli XCX album “Brat.” The pop singer has backed the Harris campaign, in a social media post where Charli XCX said, “kamala IS brat.”

Clayton, a Gen Zer who at 26 is the youngest state party chair in the country, knows how critical the youth vote will be not only in this election, but future ones.

“I feel like my job as a state party (chair) over the next election cycles, is to try to help educate our young people … because once they have the education aspect of it, they’re like, ‘I know who to vote for, I know who cares about my best interest,’” she said in an interview with States Newsroom.

But gaining the youth vote also means getting those voters to actually fill out ballots and overcome their dismay with the political process and, for Democrats, issues like the Hamas-Israel war. Some are ditching party affiliations entirely, political experts say. North Carolina, a battleground state, provides a microcosm in how partisans and others are trying to get young adults to the polls.

Matthew Trott, the president of the College Republicans at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he’s focused on educating young conservatives about down-ballot candidates and making sure they take the final step.

“A lot of young people have been registered — it’s simply getting them to vote,” he said.

Fighting for a presidential win

Sporting an iconic lime green “brat” shirt that reads, “Demo(brat),” Clayton has used the “weird” stickers to entice college students to listen to her spiel about both the presidential and down-ballot candidates and voting this November, in hopes of turning the swing state of North Carolina blue.

It’s a feat that hasn’t been done since 2008, by President Barack Obama’s campaign.

Last presidential election, Trump carried the state by a 1.4-percentage-point margin, or about 75,000 votes.

The gap could be closed on those 75,000 votes, Clayton said, by pulling in various coalitions such as young and rural voters.

“I think that there are so many communities that were not tapped into in previous election cycles, and it’s just because they weren’t organized, it’s not that they weren’t there,” she said during a canvassing event hosted by the South Asian community in late September.

Her tour across the state to about 30 colleges aimed to register students to vote before Oct. 11, which was the last day to register online or by mail in order to vote for the upcoming election. In-person voter registration is allowed during early voting, from Oct. 17 until Nov. 2.

Clayton said she registered about 150 students to vote before the college tour was cut short after Hurricane Helene ravaged the western part of North Carolina.

As people in the state worked to recover, the North Carolina Republican Party and Republican National Committee sued North Carolina’s State Board of Elections after the board approved UNC-Chapel Hill’s request to allow students to use IDs on their mobile phones as a valid form of identification to register to vote.

A Wake County Superior Court Judge ruled in favor of UNC, but an appellate court reversed the decision, meaning UNC students can no longer use their mobile IDs to register to vote.

Big issues

Young voters are very practical, Clayton said.

She rattled off issues that students have told her they care about: access to abortion, the cost of living, a cap on rent and an increase in wages.

“I think people give young people not enough credit for how much they do care, and they would be interested if they had information presented to them in that way,” she said.

Harris has multiplied support among young voters compared to when President Joe Biden was still in the race, according to a national poll by the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School that surveyed 18-to-29-year-olds across the country in September.

When the poll was conducted in the spring, Biden had a 13-point lead over Trump among likely voters. Harris in September had a 31-point lead among likely voters.

Clayton said young voters helped boost Harris after her ascension to the top of the ticket in July. Biden suspended his campaign following a disastrous debate performance that rattled Democrats.

“I don’t think that Kamala Harris’ approval ratings would have gone up so much without younger voters,” she said.

In the 2020 presidential election, Biden gained the support of 59% of voters ages 18 to 29, compared to 35% for Trump, according to an analysis of the 2020 electorate by Pew Research Center. 

‘Very pessimistic’

However, the recent Harvard poll found that just 56% of youth said they would vote, which is down from 63% percent of young adults who said they would vote in September 2020.

Young voters, especially those still in college, have several barriers to casting ballots, said Courtney Juelich, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

“Young people, regardless of generation, turn out at lower rates than older people, and a lot of that comes from just how complicated our election system is and how much is put on the individual,” she said. “We have young people having to figure it out on their own, and all these different state laws and many young people going to school in a different state. It just has these barriers to entry.”

Juelich added that for the first time, many young voters are identifying as independents. “They’re very pessimistic about the political process,” she said.

Democrats have also lost support and received heavy criticism from young voters due to the Israel-Hamas war that has led to a death toll of more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Gaza. The conflict has produced massive campus-wide protests, opposing the war and calling for a cease-fire.

“They have a very different opinion on the Middle East than the older voting bloc in the Democratic Party and obviously the Republican Party, and that was one of the biggest concerns of Biden not … generating the enthusiasm when it comes to other policies, and then having that kind of mark against him, for young voters, which can absolutely swing elections,” Juelich said.

Additionally, the war in Gaza led to an Uncommitted movement, when Biden was still campaigning for reelection. The delegates that were sent to the DNC from that movement pushed for a Palestinian American to speak at the convention, but were denied by Democrats.

Door-knocking

For Eva Eapen, an 18-year-old political science sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill, not getting involved in the upcoming election wasn’t an option.

Since the summer, she’s spent her weekends knocking on doors for North Carolina Asian Americans Together, giving nonpartisan information on polling locations and voter registration deadlines as well as information about candidates from the presidential ticket to local races.

“I think there’s a lot more at stake in this election in terms of, I don’t think it’s a policy election anymore, I think it’s literally an integrity of our democratic institutions’ election,” she said.

Eapen is a registered independent, and communications intern for Josh Stein, who is running for North Carolina governor as a Democrat.

Trott, the College Republican chief at UNC, is a 20-year-old political science and public policy junior. He said he’s working on reaching out to the traditional bases for College Republicans like religious organizations and Greek life.

He said some of the issues young Republicans are voting on include the economy and immigration.

“A lot of us are very much concerned with what we perceive as our open southern border and the threats that brings with it, and I know many of us are hopeful that with a second Trump presidency, he can take a firmer stance on that and hope to alleviate some of these problems,” Trott said.

Trott, who will be casting his first vote in a presidential election, said he’s worried about what the economy will look like when he graduates if Harris were to win the White House.

“A lot of us are very much concerned that the current economic environment once we do graduate, which, if Harris wins, would be during her tenure, would be incredibly unfavorable to us and make it a lot harder for us to get started with our lives,” he said.

A recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that the economy is a top issue for voters, with voters slightly more supportive of how Trump would handle the economy.

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walters on Oct. 2 rated Harris and Trump in a dead heat in North Carolina, at 49%.

Even though North Carolina is a battleground state, Trott thinks that Trump will easily carry the state.

“I think that he has been able to keep his base intact,” Trott said. “His supporters have not left him here.”