Kamala Harris And the Young Voter Problem

Currently, former Vice President Kamala Harris is deciding between running for Governor in 2026, running for president in 2028. Or she could just do the usual former Vice Presidential thing: being way overpaid for speaking engagements, books, and talking head appearances for the next several decades. It is a hard call. Presidential polls currently have her in first 4 points ahead of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, while the Gubernatorial polls show her with a huge lead over Democratic runner-up former Congresswoman Katie Porter.

She’s due to make her decision in the next few months, but her focus right now is repairing one of her largest weak spots in 2024 – the youth vote. Most of her sporadic public appearances recently have been to court the youth vote, with Harris most recently appearing at a youth voters summit on Friday. This all comes amid recent gaffes by Harris, like celebrating the one year anniversary of her entering the 2024 Presidential race without mentioning Joe Biden and doing so despite her losing, as well as troubling poll numbers. While still leading polls, her Presidential poll numbers have gone down 13 points since April and Gubernatorial candidates are starting to slowly catch up with her in the Governor’s race.

For Harris, she needs to improve, and getting Gen Z voters, and to an extent, Millennial voters is her aim. In 2024, both generations simply did not like her. While young voters were excited for Barack Obama in 2008, Harris didn’t get that last year, being seen as part of the establishment. Harris simply disappointed Gen Z, and as UCLA studies later found, she failed to get voters to show up like Obama, and to a lesser extent, Clinton and Biden had.

Meanwhile, the GOP made gains. According to exit polling last year, President Donald Trump picked up a larger proportion of voters under 30 than any Republican presidential candidate since 2008. Along with bringing in Latinos, independents, and disgruntled Democrats, the GOP managed to reign in the youth vote. While still in the majority for the Democrats, it was significantly pared down. For Trump in California, a youth-intensive state, he went from 4.48 million votes/31.6% of the vote in 2016 to 6 million votes/34.3% in 2020 to 6.08 million votes/38.3% in 2024.

On just under 30-year-olds, it was even more humiliating for Harris.  In 2020, President Joe Biden beat Trump by 11 percentage points among young men and 35 points among young women. 2024? Trump grabbed the Young male vote by a two point lead and gained 11 points amongst women, with Harris only leading young women by 24 points. Even Hillary Clinton managed to get a greater number of female votes than Obama from 2012 to 2016.

This is why Harris is courting the youth as much as possible now. Independent and Latino voters are still a bit shaky following Trump policy shifts this years, with every candidate trying to get piece of those demographics. But for younger voters, it’s a Harris problem. Both Buttigieg and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) hold the youth vote amongst Democratic Presidential candidates, while in the Gubernatorial race Porter has the youth edge.

All of this confirms what the GOP has been saying for months – she’s vulnerable in both races. And if Trump can improve his approval rating and win back some of his youth gains, Harris is going to once again feel the heat of a voting bloc that would rather not vote at all if she’s a candidate, or worse for the Democrats, go GOP instead. And the GOP knows it – they’ve been pressing more on younger voters in recent years too, with far more success.