A dispatch from Milwaukee
An expanding pro-Trump youth coalition. The conservative climate movement. And young voters in key NY and CA districts could help decide who controls the House.
Happy post-Republican National Convention Friday. To start, check out my latest piece in the New York Times about who young conservatives are listening to online. They’re grown up in a Trump-dominated political and media ecosystem. But who are the other voices shaping young Republicans’ opinions? Check it out here.
Trump’s expanding youth coalition
My biggest takeaway from this week in Wisconsin is that former President Donald Trump has made gains with young voters. Seeing the energy of young Republicans around the RNC this week, and talking to young people who said that while they wouldn’t have predicted it months ago, they are leaning toward voting for Trump in the fall, it’s abundantly clear that the young voters of 2024 are not the young voters of 2020.
“The culture from 2016 to, let's say, 2020 among young people had been to be anti-Trump. If you were pro Trump, that was not cool. You were some sort of weirdo. I supported Trump openly in those years, and I did catch a lot of flack growing up in Southern California, going to a public school for most of those years,” Christoper Philips, 21 and a student at The University of Chicago, said at the nonpartisan ‘Youth Vote Fest’ event hosted just outside the RNC by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition. “Now on high school and college campuses, especially on my campus, it's a lot more permissible socially to speak your mind and to very least critique the Democrats and [President] Joe Biden. That is something that is totally within the Overton Window, even on a leftist college Campus.”
Philips — who’s interning for former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy this summer — gave voice to why Trump’s campaign may be resonating with young people, putting his finger on the populist nature of the Republican candidate for presidents’ rhetoric. Philips listed economic concerns, the rising cost of living, and housing costs as issues vexing young people. And for him, freedom of speech is a top concern.
“The rise of populism, the rise of Donald Trump, has been fueled in large part by the failures of the status quo and the status quo solutions,” he said, adding, “that totally translates to younger people who are less set in their ways with traditional politics and are more willing to actually observe and evaluate other perspectives and other philosophies.”
I’ve previewed this a bit over the past few months. I’ve talked about the Trumpification of TikTok. I’ve written about the Republican National Committee’s youth advisory council and the strong message from young Republican leaders that the party needed to take young voters more seriously (they knew there was an opportunity to resonate with more moderate young Americans on issues like the economy and even culture). And I’ve noted polling showing a huge enthusiasm gap in how young voters who plan to vote for Trump feel about doing so, versus those who plan to vote for Biden. This spring’s Harvard IOP youth poll showed that while 76% of young Trump voters said they were excited to vote for the former president, just 44% of young Biden voters said the same about the president.
Of the cohort of young people excited to vote for Trump, there’s a lot of energy from first time voters (like Philips). These are young adults who really grew up with Trump in office. They were in middle and high school during his first term and are now college students or are just entering the work force. They only know a Trumpian political environment, so for many, there’s no point of comparison to the days of yore.
Sure, take this with a grain of salt. I was at events around the RNC… so a preference for Trump isn’t a shocker. That said, this trend isn’t isolated to the folks I spoke with in Milwaukee. While I’ve always cautioned taking the 18-29 cross tab of major national polls too seriously (because these polls mostly use landlines and phone calls to reach respondents), the most recent New York Times/Siena poll has Trump up 8 points with registered voters under 30. That’s a lead we would have been shocked at four years ago.
The Free Press’ Olivia Reingold has a great piece on Zoomers for Trump. Check out her reel below and read the full piece here.
YouthVote Fest
In addition to conversations with students like Philips and Kayley Bell, 19 and a student at University of Wisconsin at Madison (featured below), Youth Vote Fest featured workshops and speakers including conservative environmentalist and founder of the American Conservation Coalition Benji Backer, director of Diversity & Engagement for the Indiana Republican Party Whitley Yates, media personality Clay Travis, and former South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy.
The conservative youth climate movement had a place at the RNC
Since 2017, the youth-led American Conservation Coalition has sought to make environmentalism and combating the climate change a part of the Republican Party platform. At the outset, they faced resistance, given prominent GOP leaders’ unwillingness to acknowledge climate change as a legitimate concern. But their activism appears to paying off and the group has certainly legitimized itself with the Republican Party with 50,000 national student and young adult members across the country. This week, ACC served as an RNC sponsor and co-hosted the first climate-focused reception at the RNC in recent memory.
“I always grew up saying I’m conservative on everything except the environment. It felt like those two things were always in tension,” president of ACC and RNC youth advisory council member Chris Barnard said at the reception. “I know that’s no longer true.”
And inside the Fiserv Forum, the group commissioned a "paint-by-numbers" canvas for RNC attendees to contribute to throughout the week. The canvas depicted the tagline “Leave a Legacy,” which ACC says they're hoping the RNC will do on environmental issues, like climate. I'm told the idea behind the initiative was to "create something beautiful in the name of environmental advocacy, rather than destroying priceless paintings or stopping traffic" — a clear contrast to the tactics used by left-leaning climate activists around the world.
NPR’s Ximena Bustillo has a great piece on ACC and the RNC out today, titled ‘Climate hasn't been core to the GOP. These conservatives are trying to change that’
Insight from experts — don’t sleep on New York and California
Prior to YouthVote Fest, the University of Chicago IOP hosted two panels with experts from the Cook Political Report (along with David Axelrod, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio, and Jeff Liszt, who did research for the Obama and Clinton campaigns. In a panel featuring Cook Political Report experts, Erin Covey spoke about the importance of toss up races in states like New York and California in determining who will control the House of Representatives. She made a point to note that young voters could make a big difference here — depending both on if they choose to turnout and who they decide to vote for.
Thinking back to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts’ Youth Electoral Significance Ratings, there are six House districts in New York and California that the group identified as districts where young voters could make the biggest difference in November.
These are:
New York-17, currently held by Republican Rep. Mike Lawler
New York-04, currently held by Republican. Rep. Anthony D’Esposito
New York-22, currently held by Republican Rep. Brandon Williams
California-27, currently held by Republican Rep. Mike Garcia
New York-03, currently held by Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi
New York-19, currently held by Republican Rep. Marc Molinaro