In a bustling restaurant in northwest Atlanta, roughly a dozen young Republicans are surrounded by pitchers, chips and salsa, chatting and laughing as they fill out postcards.
"Anybody need a drink?" calls Winslow Jones, the president of Atlanta Young Republicans.
The group has met for what they’re calling Margaritas and Mailers, and today they are handwriting postcards asking for support for two down-ballot GOP candidates running in nearby districts.
“Margaritas help,” Jones laughs. “This is an environment where people can come and connect with likeminded people.”
As election day nears, all eyes are once again on Georgia and its 16 electoral votes. And this time, one essential voting bloc is getting a lot of attention: millennials and Gen Z.
Voters under 44 years old will make up about half the eligible voting population in the U.S. this fall, according to population projections from the U.S. Census Bureau. NPR traveled to Atlanta to see how different groups of young organizers are approaching this moment.
Supporting a third Trump run
At the Young Republican meet-up, Jones points to the intellectual diversity among its members, including the varying opinions on former President Donald Trump.
“I think across the board there can be mixed feelings about Trump,” she says. “But I think what we're all united on is this is a much bigger picture here that we need to look at … issues that are affecting people at large.”
Jones says the issues resonating with younger conservatives like herself include the economy, the U.S.-Mexico border and crime.
Nearby, Jacquelyn Harn is also busy writing postcards. She’s the chairwoman of the statewide group, Young Republicans of Georgia.
“We're excited for a change,” Harn says when asked about Trump’s 2024 run. “We want the life that we had four years ago when President Trump was president. And his policies — his conservative policies — we need those back, and we want those to be able to achieve our version of the American dream again.”
Harn says young people have been hit hard by the economy and inflation. She points to housing and the fact that she can’t afford to buy a house because she’s “paying rent out the wazoo every month.” And she doesn’t see that changing if Kamala Harris wins.
“She's saying day one, she's going to fix the housing crisis and the pricing and inflation,” Harn says. “She's had three-and-a-half years to do that, so no one's buying it.”
Yet while younger Republicans in Atlanta are mobilizing, young conservatives in general are becoming increasingly rare, says Kerwin Swint, a political science professor at Kennesaw State University.
“Since the Obama years, the youth vote really has sided with the Democratic presidential candidate more often than not,” Swint told NPR. “The only question has been, what's the size of that turnout for the Democratic candidate?”
Back at the Margaritas and Mailers event, NPR asks Harn if it’s harder for Republican groups to fire up younger voters who may be watching Harris, who is nearly 20 years younger than Trump and has landed high-profile endorsements likely to resonate with young people, like from Taylor Swift.
Harn says she isn’t fazed: “Taylor Swift is a billionaire who doesn't have to worry about how much groceries costs … you can't tell me she relates to the average person around this table tonight. So if the best they can do is a celebrity endorsement that is not relatable at all, I don’t see what they’re doing.”
Harris taking over the ticket
In the two months since President Biden stepped aside and Harris took the top of the ticket, Democratic groups in Georgia have shifted their campaigning into overdrive.
“Things just got crazy out of nowhere,” says Davante Jennings, the president of Young Democrats of Georgia. “Like, more people involved, more support, more work, more canvassing, more text banking. But it’s good.”
When we meet Jennings recently at the Atlanta headquarters of the Harris-Walz campaign, he is joined by a dozen 20-somethings all typing on laptops set up on white folding tables, surrounded by pizza boxes. At the front of the room, a screen shows dozens more joining via Zoom. This is a joint text banking event, co-hosted by Young Democrats of Georgia, Men4Choice and Reproductive Freedom for All.
For organizers like Jennings, the goal is to hold onto the wave of enthusiasm Harris’ candidacy generated and use it to mobilize all Georgians. At this event, they sent about 64,000 texts, all aimed at a very specific group: men of color, 27 to 50 years old.
“The backbone of the Democratic Party is the Black vote, which is why the Republicans are heavily focused on Black men specifically,” Jennings says. “When we show up … elections seem to kind of flip. And right now it's not 100% guaranteed that we're going to get all of the Black vote.”
Jennings is also acutely aware of how seemingly small moments can build momentum. He just took over as the Young Democrats president from Parker Short, who recently went viral for lip-syncing Kendrick Lamar at a Harris rally in Atlanta. Jennings says the group got a lot more inquiries from potential organizers after that.
Yet while the Harris-Walz campaign is leaning hard into online messaging, embracing memes and viral moments on platforms like TikTok, political science professor Bernard Fraga of Emory University says it may have its limits. It’s one thing to have that support from young people online, he says, it’s another to turn that into ballots.
“It still remains to be seen whether the Harris campaign can continue that momentum all the way into November and make sure that Gen Z and younger voters are mobilized and active participants in our democracy,” he told NPR.
Getting out the youth vote, no matter what
Outside of campaigning for either party, a swathe of nonpartisan groups operate in Georgia and are working to simply make sure young people are politically engaged.
Among them is Rise, a nonprofit organization specifically targeting Gen Z students. It recruits ambassadors and pays them $3 for every person they get to pledge to vote. We met Rise’s Georgia organizers recently in an area of Atlanta that includes a number of HBCUs, like Morehouse, Spelman and Clark Atlanta University.
In a presentation to a group of college students interested in becoming ambassadors, Rise’s leaders tell them to highlight issues that are likely to resonate.
“How many folks in here have been impacted by gun violence?” asks Aunna Dennis, Rise’s director of Georgia. Nearly every hand in the room goes up.
Dennis tells NPR the aim is to mobilize millions of young voters across the country, but specifically in Georgia.
“We got 12 million voters here in this area alone, we have over five million registered voters. And we can unleash the youth wave on each of these campus communities,” she says. “That's a win for us.”
Meanwhile, at Kennesaw State University, nonprofit Poder Latinx has come to campus for National Voter Registration day. On the campus lawn, organizers are handing out pins, stickers, drinks — even bottles of Tajin — waving students over to the tent and encouraging them to register. By the end of the day, 81 new voters had registered, taking the total to more than 1,100 since Poder Latinx started doing this in March.
One of the students that came by the table was 19-year-old Iambianze Jackson. She told us she is planning to vote for Harris this November, but is less than enthusiastic.
“She doesn’t really explain her policies well,” Jackson says. “She mainly talks about tax cuts for the middle class but like, she doesn’t really have policies.”
And then Jackson says something we heard from a few people in this battleground state: The election can’t come fast enough.
“I’m ready for it to be over,” Jackson says with a laugh. “I’m ready for the results to come out so we can just proceed from there, whatever happens.”
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