With the presidential election coming up in just two months, Tufts faculty and students are witnessing the race between Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican candidate former President Donald Trump.
The 2024 campaign cycle has already made history in several ways. On July 21, President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed Harris after nearly a month of calls for him to step down, becoming the first president to be pressured out of a reelection campaign over concerns about his fitness for office. If Harris loses to Trump, Trump would be only the second former president in U.S. history to return to the White House after losing at the polls four years earlier.
Deborah Schildkraut, a professor of political science, pointed out that the past several election years have been part of an unprecedented period in American politics.
“Each election [is like] a snowflake. They’re each unique in their own way,” she said. “But it does feel like the past couple have been particularly unique. So it’s hard for political scientists to know how much of our prior theories and expectations apply, [or know] how much of what we’re seeing now is a new normal.”
Since Harris entered the presidential race, enthusiasm amongst young voters has spiked, with some youth voter groups saying they raised record amounts of money shortly after Harris launched her campaign. Alberto Medina, communications team lead for Tufts’ Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, discussed recent trends of increased youth political involvement.
“The trend we have seen among young people is a trend of increased voting in the last few elections,” Medina said. “We estimated that 39% of young people voted in 2016 and 50% of young people voted in 2020, so we've definitely seen young people, especially [the Generation] Z generation of eligible voters, really kind of rise up and understand that they have political power and use that power in the elections and in other ways.”
Medina also said that CIRCLE’s research has challenged some prevailing ideas about Gen Z, such as the belief that they receive most of their political information through social media.
“We’ve done research in recent cycles asking young people, ‘Where do you get your information about elections?’ Yes, social media is important. But even more so than social media is their parents and relatives, their peers and classmates, their neighbors and community members,” Medina said.
In their surveys of Gen Z, CIRCLE found that, similarly to older generations, respondents were primarily concerned about economic issues; however, they also prioritized social issues that have been championed by youth-led activism movements.
“Far and away, the economy is young people’s top concern heading into the election,” Medina said. “Especially the issue of cost of living and inflation… and then in second place in the issue rankings was jobs that pay a living wage. [Rounding out] the top five issues were climate change, gun violence and abortion access.”
The campaign strategies used by both the Trump and Harris campaigns reflect recent increases in youth civic engagement. The Republican Party has relied on social media platforms to attract young voters, such as having Trump appear on a live stream with internet celebrity Adin Ross on the online platform Kick. From the Harris campaign capitalizing on “kamala IS brat” to inviting singers such as Megan Thee Stallion to campaign rallies, Democrats have also made appealing to young voters a key part of their approach.
Members of Tufts Democrats said they were surprised at how effectively Harris’s campaign was able to spark a new wave of enthusiasm among young voters.
“It’s one of the craziest turnarounds I’ve ever seen, where someone who’s not running for president just throws their hat into the ring, gets this much support and it’s a complete turnaround to the polls,” Zachary Zinman, president of Tufts Democrats, said.
“I saw a graphic the other day that showed that the average donor for the Harris campaign is a lot younger than the average Biden donor,” Dana Zucker, vice president and treasurer of Tufts Democrats, said. “So I think it’s working. The youth generation is very important in elections — they just don’t turn out for some reason.”
Tufts Democrats say their main goal for the upcoming election season is to encourage more of the Tufts community to engage in politics.
“[Young people] can be very energetic. They can be change-makers. That’s one of the messages of Tufts Democrats this year: We just want everyone to get involved,” Zinman said. “And college is the hotbed for the political sphere, so this is the opportunity to do it.”
Throughout the semester, Tufts Democrats plans to host watch parties and speaker events, as well as organize fundraisers and phone banking. Zinman and Zucker both expressed that they hope to foster collaboration with other political groups on campus to bridge political polarization across the country and in higher education.
“Right now on a lot of college campuses, and even including ours, political discourse is stigmatized, and one of our goals for this year is to destigmatize political discourse. If that means working with the Tufts Republicans, I’m for it,” Zinman said. “I would love to do an event with them. I don’t think we’re gonna get anywhere by just ignoring each other and not speaking with each other. I think that’s counterproductive.”
Schildkraut also emphasized the importance of cooperation across political lines.
“Democracy is messy,” she said. “It’s important to … think about ways to cultivate a comfort with conflict, as opposed to shying away from it, or assuming that conflict is suspect and that a person on the other side has ill motives.”
The Daily reached out to Tufts Republicans for comment but received no reply.
