Gen Z and the US election
what do we make of it all?
Welcome to the latest edition of The Gen Zer. This week, we take a deep dive into how Gen Z are reacting to the upcoming US election. (If you can’t face reading anything more about the US election, feel free to skip over the main article and jump straight to the ‘Gen Z around the web’ section. It’s got some good stories and is 100% election-free😬)
Earlier on during this seemingly endless US presidential election cycle, I wrote about what Gen Zers think of Kamala Harris, shortly after she became the nominee for the Democratic party. With less than a week to go, I thought it would be a good time to revisit the campaigns across the pond. For many Zers, this will be the first time that they can vote, and everything from social media to a few viral moments have been making this a wholly unique election season.
Social media & campaigning:
If 2016 was the Facebook election, 2024 is definitely the TikTok one. It currently seems like the election will come down to a knife-edge, potentially depending on only a few thousand votes in the key swing states. Given that, both parties have been stepping up their attempts to reach voters, moving beyond traditional mediums to a wide array of platforms, from podcasts to TikToks to online influencers.
When Harris was first announced as the Democratic Party nominee, after Joe Biden dropped out of the race, her team was incredibly quick to capitalise on the online buzz, helped along by Charli XCX tweeting ‘kamala IS brat’. (If you don’t know the relevance of that . . . Well, miracles happen, I guess.) The Financial Times recently did an article about the ‘feral 25-year-olds’ who have been helping Harris’ team to win over Gen Z online; the TikTok account for her campaign has over 5 million followers, with posts ranging from the serious to the highly memed.
The somewhat offbeat energy of the campaigns go far beyond TikTok, of course. The Party to the Polls Purple Tour is a series of nonpartisan events aimed at encouraging voter turnout in areas where there are a lot of young people who don’t normally vote. Last Wednesday one of those events saw the rapper Yung Gravy, 28, (best known, apparently, for dating Addison Rae’s mother) performing a free concert, and afterwards leading a parade of roughly 750 people to a polling place, where the majority then voted. Yung Gravy himself gave a more candid reason why young people should vote: “Girls will like you,” he told The Daily Cardinal, a student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in a recent interview.
It’s not just Mr Gravy who has been going to parties to try and engage young people, either. This week senior Democrats have been heading to college campuses across the US, according to The Times. They’ve been attending concerts and house parties with the aim of drumming up some last minute Gen Z votes. (Many Zers are still undecided or aren’t planning on voting at all, with some citing things like their government’s stance on Israel and Palestine as reasons for not supporting either candidate.)
Trump’s team has similarly been taking to TikTok and other digital platforms to try and win over some of the youth vote. Trump even appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, the most listened-to podcast in the world.
The appearance on the podcast seems like an appeal directly towards young people, particularly young men. In Europe, right wing parties like Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) and France’s National Rally (RN) have reshaped their image and massively boosted their young following by utilising platforms like TikTok. Given their successes with TikTok, it makes sense that the Trump team would try a similar thing. They’ve even just started advertising on Snapchat again, after boycotting the platform for years after it banned Trump’s personal account following the Capitol riot.
There have been a lot of articles in recent times about the emerging gender gap around the world, with young women continuing to shift left whilst young men have been instead tilting more to the right. (Similarly, for the first time in the US, young men are now more religious than young women.) Trump’s campaign is perhaps trying to lean into this divide. The Joe Rogan Experience has a large following particularly amongst young men, espousing a mixture of libertarian views and anti-establishment rhetoric that resonates with the demographic. The platform’s reach and Rogan’s influence serves as fertile ground for Trump’s campaign to tap into the shifting gender divides.
In a similar vein, Kamala Harris aimed to court the young female vote through her appearance on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, which is the second most listened-to podcast. (Both Call Her Daddy and the Joe Rogan Experience extended invites to the other candidate as well. Harris’ team accepted, although Rogan later rejected her conditions, which included travelling to meet her.)
Overall, celebrity endorsements have been playing a large part throughout the presidential race. As a way to reach young people they’re particularly effective: many youngsters might not pay much attention to the newspapers, but if Taylor Swift posts on Instagram, or Beyoncé speaks at a rally, they’re likely to take notice. Swift herself took to the platform to endorse Harris shortly after Trump’s team used deepfakes of her falsely endorsing Trump. Similarly, Puerto Rican star Bad Bunny endorsed Harris last week after a comedian at a Trump rally referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” with another Puerto Rican artist, Nicky Jam, publicly rescinding his endorsement of Trump on Instagram for the same reason.
Many of the celebrities getting active in the campaigns are Gen Zers themselves. The singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams recently performed at one of Harris’ rallies, speaking about the importance of political engagement for our generation. “We have values and ideas that deserve a platform,” she told a young-leaning crowd, to uproarious applause.
For Trump, there’s seemingly been no bigger spokesperson in recent weeks than Elon Musk, who has been using his wealth and his hundreds of millions of followers to very vocally support his campaign. Musk recently announced that he would award a $1m prize every day to people in swing states who sign a Trump-leaning petition, causing him a few legal troubles (although he failed to appear in today’s court hearing for the case).
First time voters:
Quite a few Gen Zers would have been able to vote in the last US election, of course. The generation is born between 1996 and 2012 (give or take a few years — there’s no universal agreement on the age bracket) and so the eldest Zers could have voted in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
This year, there are eight million new Gen Z voters in the US (for a total of 40 million potential Gen Z voters). Some of these new voters would have only been 10 when Trump won in 2016, and what they’ve experienced from national politics will be a pretty different thing to someone ten years older. From coming of age during Covid, to only really knowing either Trump or Biden as President, they’ve had a pretty unique time so far.
It also means that some of the headlines from 2016 are being discovered by first-time voters for the very first time. Young Zers may not have paid much attention to all of Trump’s controversies in 2016, but social media is perennially good at dredging up the past. This week, there have been quite a few articles about Gen Zers on TikTok filming their reactions to hearing the Trump Access Hollywood tape, where Trump brags about sexually assaulting women, for the first time. Many of the videos have text overlays along the lines of “Fathers are voting for this man.” It’s interesting seeing something that made the headlines eight years ago (but which ultimately failed to change the election result) resurface in this way, with the fresh reactions of a new generation. Eight years later, for many Zers, “Grab ’em by the pussy” is no less vile.
These first time voters have been a particular focus for Harris’ campaign over the past few days. At a rally in the swing state Wisconsin (which has been decided by a knife edge for the last two elections) Harris appealed directly to the Gen Zers: “I love your generation, I just love you guys . . . I see your power, and I’m so proud of you. Can we hear it for our first-time voters!” She went on to praise young people for being “rightly impatient for change,” particularly amongst the challenges of the climate crisis and school shootings, which both remain key worries for the generation.
Polling & voter turnout:
Campaigning is all well and good, but is any of it actually making a difference? The poll’s are showing a dead heat, although it’s not always super clear how accurate of a picture the polls actually paint. (I also saw one study showing that Gen Z are the generation most likely to lie about who they’re voting for, confusing matters further.)
The good news, no matter your political leanings, is that voter turnout seems to be steadily increasing for young people. College students in particular are voting in greater numbers, with many feeling like this election matters more to them personally than usual.
Who young people are going to actually vote for, though, remains to be seen. For over half a century, the youth vote in the US has reliably gone to the Democrats, making a crucial difference in the closest of elections. A CNBC poll shows that Harris is leading with voters under the age of 34 by a 20% margin (60%-40%), although polling for young people is even more tentative than usual, given how undecided many in our generation remain.
And, as I’ve already mentioned, the vote is divided between young men and young women. In the midterms in 2022, for instance, 72% of Gen Z women voted blue, whereas Gen Z men were split almost evenly, with 52% voting for the Democrats.
This election will have consequences for longer than just the next five years, of course. As Gen Zers continue to come of age in the US, what happens next will shape their lives and democratic involvement for years to come. Despite that, it’s still impossible to predict what’s actually going to happen next — for Gen Z, and for all other generations, too.
Anyway, happy Halloween💀
See also:
Gen Z around the Web
the latest stories in youth culture and changing trends . . .
Urban Outfitters wants to pull off an Abercrombie-like turnaround (cnn)
Urban Outfitters recently admitted that it doesn’t know how to sell to Gen Z, and is now looking to take a page from Abercrombie & Fitch’s successful rebranding by focusing on college culture and a wider variety of affordable options. From new college shops (with college essentials, like a pair of Birkenstocks), to doubling down on TikTok and Instagram, launching an influencer collective to help bridge the brand’s style with Gen Z’s affinity for comfort and individuality. Read more
6 brands returning to print (substack)
“Maybe we're all just tired. While the internet is forever, forever is exhausting. Sometimes you want your content to end. Sometimes you want to hold something real.” Amid signs of digital fatigue, several brands are returning to the joys of a print magazine, from dating apps making zines, to older magazines reversing their digital only presence. It’s a clever move, particularly since Gen Z love all things analogue. Read more
There’s been a dramatic drop in marijuana use among US youth (fau)
A recent study from Florida Atlantic University found a significant decline in marijuana use among U.S. adolescents over the past decade, with current use falling from 23% in 2011 to less than 16% in 2021. (First-time use before age 13 also dropped.) Surprisingly, girls now report higher usage than boys, in a reversal of previous trends. Read more
‘Gen Z are turning to culture instead of alcohol’ (big issue)
The party holiday may be on the way out. Gen Zers are reportedly prioritising local culture on trips abroad, instead of the traditional booze-focused trips. According to a recent report, only 5% of Gen Zers said party holidays ‘appeal to them’, with a surprisingly small amount even caring about the bars and clubs in the area they’d want to visit. In fact, 23% of the young people they surveyed said they would ‘never’ choose a destination known for its partying, preferring instead to enjoy a relaxing beach holiday or break in a city known for its famous landmarks. Read more
Vinted hits $5.4B valuation (tech crunch)
Vinted, the second-hand fashion platform, has reached a $5.4 billion valuation following a secondary share sale. This new valuation highlights Vinted’s growing impact in Europe’s resale market, with 105 million users and revenue growth of 61% in 2023. The company’s success is fuelled by its sustainability-focused, no-fee model for sellers, encouraging a circular fashion economy. As the company aims to improve its influence in the U.S. market as well, it really does seem like second-hand fashion is having a hey-day. Read more
That’s all for this week! Make sure to subscribe for the latest on Gen Z and youth culture, and check out The Common Thred for a weekly roundup of the latest news, trends and thought pieces.
See ya soon,
🔥🔥
love the concert plus walk to the polls - great idea!