As voters express concern about President Joe Biden’s age, according to polling, the organizers of his reelection campaign are courting young people with a new Students for Biden-Harris initiative.
Designed to mobilize student voters throughout the country, the program launched Monday to reach young people on campus and online by touting the Biden administration’s achievements on the issues they care about most.
“Whether it’s tackling the climate crisis, fighting gun violence or being the most pro-union administration, we are making progress on the vision of a more equitable world,” Biden-Harris 2024 National Advisory Board Member and first-term U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., said in a statement.
“Young voters were crucial in delivering the election for President Biden and Vice President Harris in 2020, and they will be just as consequential in 2024,” said Frost, who was 25 years old when he was elected in 2020 and is the first member of Generation Z to serve in Congress.
In the 2020 election, 65% of Gen Z voters between the ages of 18 and 24 voted for Biden — or about 11% more than all other age groups, according to an NBC poll.
In the 2024 rematch between Biden and former president Donald Trump, students will be just as critical of a voting bloc. Referring to young Americans as “a key constituency,” Students for Biden-Harris sees the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 as a driving force for young women in particular.
“We’re ready to get to work,” Vice President Kamala Harris said at an event Monday to help launch the new initiative. “We’re ready to mobilize young voters across the country in the fight for our fundamental rights and freedoms.”
Biden-Harris 2024 announced on Monday a joint endorsement from a coalition of 15 youth vote groups, including College Democrats of America, High School Democrats of America, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Voices of Gen-Z.
“The President and Vice President are proud to earn the support of these groups that represent young Americans nationwide,” Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement Monday. “The President and Vice President have spent their first term working with young people and fighting for the issues that matter most to them — taking historic action to cancel student debt, combat climate change and address gun violence.”
Since 2021, the Biden administration has canceled $138 billion in student loan debt for about 3.9 billion borrowers. It also enacted the Inflation Reduction Act — the largest initiative in U.S. history to address climate change — and signed the first major gun safety law passed by Congress in almost three decades.
Inflation/cost of living, jobs that pay a living wage, gun violence and climate change are the key issues for voters between the ages of 18 and 34 in the 2024 election, according to the Tufts Tisch College Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
Young voters who say climate is their top issue are 20 points more likely to vote than other young people and 37 points more likely to prefer a Democrat for president. The Tufts poll found Democrats have an overall advantage among young people in the upcoming election, with 51% backing the Democratic candidate, 30% supporting the Republican and 16% undecided.
The poll found that 57% of youth are extremely like to vote in 2024; another 15% say they are fairly likely to cast a ballot. Yet only 19% of young people have heard so far from political parties, campaigns or community organizations.
The Students for Biden-Harris organizing program said it is working with youth vote groups to mobilize on more than 1,000 campuses where they are active, using over 500,000 volunteers that can reach 26+ million people on social media and make more than 155 million direct contacts with voters.