by Ziv Golan ’26

This past July the presidential race was completely shaken up when President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. Since then Harris has built up her campaign, becoming the official nominee for the Democratic Party in August. With the introduction of Harris as the new Democratic nominee, many hoped that she would be able to turn around many groups that had previously been resistant to a second Biden term. This change in voter enthusiasm has seemed to coalesce in younger voters who support Harris in far greater numbers compared to Biden, according to polls. A US News/Generation Lab survey conducted between August 25 and September 3 indicates a 30-point lead for Harris among voters 18-34 in multiple swing states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, compared to an 18-point lead Biden held in the same poll after the first presidential debate in June.

Harris has made youth appeal a focus of her campaign, utilizing social media trends to appeal to younger voters. The Harris campaign, nicknamed “Kamala HQ” on social media, has a presence on TikTok and Instagram among other platforms. The campaign regularly posts videos using dances, slang, and music popular among Gen Z voters. The campaign has used music from well-known artists such as Taylor Swift and Chappell Roan, showing younger voters that they are in touch with trends and want to engage them with the campaign. The Harris campaign has also embraced meme culture, something that no modern presidential campaign has really done before. Memes such as the “coconut tree,” which is a soundbite of one of Harris’s speeches that went viral, have been used by the campaign on TikTok. This excites younger voters, showing them that politics don’t always have to be overly serious. The Harris team hopes that the presence on social media will serve as outreach to teenagers who will be able to vote in the not-so-distant future. By doing this the campaign is trying to show teens that they are focused on the future and encouraging them to register to vote, something they can do at age 16.

This effort from the Harris campaign has gained endorsements from well-known public figures such as Swift, who has encouraged her fans to register to vote. This has added to the momentum of the Harris campaign, as well as an increase in voter registration from young adults. In the immediate days following her endorsement, more than 400,000 people visited the government-run voter information site that she put in her post with the battleground state of Wisconsin reporting an increase of 1,300 new voters.