Voter Registration Surging As Harris Inspires Young Americans
After President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign on Sunday and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the next Democratic nominee, Vote.org reportedly registered 38,500 new voters over the next 48 hours. This represents a 700 percent surge over the previous 48 hours, with most of those voters being ages 34 and younger.
That beats the previous best day of the 2024 cycle, which came on National Voter Registration Day in September when pop superstar Taylor Swift posted an Instagram story urging her followers to get registered. That message helped spur over 35,000 new voter registrations.
The latest surge in registrations comes as Harris and other Democratic candidates see a flood of donations. Since Harris entered the race, ActBlue has recorded $179 million in donations to Democratic candidates and causes. That's just part of a historic flood of over $250 million that poured in since Harris became the nominee-apparent.
It all reflects a genuine, pent-up demand for something new. And Harris is meeting that demand.
Even before it was clear there would be a Biden vs. Donald Trump rematch, voters were begging for something, anything, other than a Biden vs. Donald Trump rematch. In a December poll by the Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, over half of Americans said they would be dissatisfied if the race were a repeat of the 2020 matchup.
The lack of enthusiasm was notable at ActBlue, where contributions were not only running behind the 2020 election cycle but also trailing contributions during the 2022 midterm elections.
That big spike on the far right of the chart reflects the sharp increase in contributions since Harris started running for president. This article was written early Wednesday morning, and this week already rivals the top weeks at the very end of the 2020 presidential election cycle. That’s big.
Democrats are excited about Harris. That’s reflected in the contributions.
Young voters, who tend to be more Democratic than other age groups, are excited about Harris. That’s reflected in the registrations.
Those young voters are particularly energized and enthusiastic over the change in the ticket. As WGBH Boston reported on Sunday, some young Democrats were willing to turn up for Biden. But they’re willing to work for Harris.
“This is the most energized I have felt as a young Democratic voter in so long,” 22-year-old Democrat Audrey Grant told WGBH. “I think this is one of the first times that the Democratic Party has seized control of a media narrative and really changed the tide.”
That younger demographic—and in particular, younger voters of color—was critical to carrying Biden and Harris over the top in 2020. It could be even more critical this year.
That Harris could pull in the kind of registration numbers associated with someone like Swift is encouraging. But the real power that such cultural figures have to move the needle shouldn’t be ignored.
On Tuesday, Beyoncé gave Harris permission to use her popular 2016 song “Freedom" in her campaign. Harris made it her entrance song in her first campaign appearance in the swing state of Wisconsin.
Swift’s obvious political clout and concerns that she would endorse Biden drove Republicans to distraction earlier in the year, leading to a host of conspiracy theories. Since Harris kicked off her campaign, the surge of Democratic zeal is already generating speculation over what might happen if Swift publicly rallies around Harris.
If Swift did so, she’d be in good company among pop stars. British singer—and the summer’s it-girl—Charli XCX declared that “kamala IS brat,” referring to the title of her latest album, and the Harris campaign quickly adopted the album’s lime-green cover art as the backdrop on their X (formerly Twitter) account.
There’s plenty of room for more synergy between Harris and singers whose impact is great enough to shift economies. A 2018 post from Swift in which she endorsed two candidates in Tennessee helped propel a surge of roughly 65,000 new signups at Vote.org in just 24 hours.
Official endorsements from Swift, Beyoncé, and others might break the internet—and the will of Republicans who see the tide turning against them.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
