OPINION:
President-elect Donald Trump won with the help of nontraditional Republican voters in 2024. An increased share of the vote from Black, Hispanic, Jewish and especially younger Americans was the key to his big win in the Electoral College and the popular vote.
According to data from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, 18- to 29-year-old voters favored Vice President Kamala Harris over Mr. Trump in the 2024 election by 6 percentage points. The same group of voters favored President Biden over then-President Trump in 2020 by 25 points. Narrowing the gap between 25 points to 6 points was a major factor in the blowout we saw this week.
After the red wave predicted in 2022 failed to materialize, I publicly declared that younger voters are the issue. The margin between the liberal and conservative candidates in several battleground states during that cycle exceeded 30 points. More than a specific issue or the quality of candidates, young voters were the driving factor in the victory of many liberals in targeted races.
On X, I wrote: “It comes from years of radical indoctrination — on campus, in school, with social media, & throughout culture. We have to counter it, or conservatives will never win battleground states again.”
At Young America’s Foundation, we took action and began a Campaign to Save America. We set out to (1) train and equip more students to uphold conservative values, (2) spread these values on college campuses, in schools and in communities with some of the best conservative speakers in the country and (3) scale up our outreach through digital platforms.
Our YouTube channel, YAFTV, now has more than 1.7 million subscribers and our social media platforms exceed 1.4 billion views. Other groups have also stepped up to the challenge, and it is clearly having an impact.
At the same time, we engaged in aggressive polling of high school and college students. College students said their top issue was the economy by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. The corporate media were in such disbelief earlier this year when I stated this truth that they did a PolitiFact check on me that ended up being rated true.
Overall, Generation Z values authenticity and fairness. Younger voters do not have to agree with Mr. Trump on everything, but they appreciate that he is the real deal and gets things done. In contrast, Ms. Harris is viewed as inauthentic.
The opening question in the final presidential debate was directed at the vice president. ABC News’ David Muir asked her to respond to the criticism that the economy was not as good as it was four years ago. Instead of acknowledging the pain felt by many Americans — including many young people — the Democratic nominee talked about being raised in a middle-class family.
Independent voters did not like her response since it seemed she didn’t have an answer for their economic suffering. While older voters tend to be more strictly aligned with one political party, data shows that younger voters are more likely to only lean toward one party or the other. They needed her to feel their pain.
The Harris campaign scheduled few media interviews, and those that it did were largely seen as being filled with favorable questions. Even then, she messed up responses, including what she would do differently than Mr. Biden.
Young people also care about fairness. It does not seem fair that so many people have so much less take-home pay than four years ago. It also doesn’t seem fair that the federal government allows illicit drugs, guns and traffickers to cross the border illegally or that violent crime is surging in our largest cities.
On top of that, many people believe that it is not fair for transgender athletes to compete with women and girls. They don’t think using race as a factor in enrollment or in college enrollment is fair. They don’t believe cracking down on free speech rights is fair.
Young men are often the target of the “woke” agenda. They particularly feel such targeting is unfair. Exit polls showed that young men went with Mr. Trump by 14 points in 2024 versus going with Mr. Biden by 15 points in 2020. That swing helped offset the huge margins given by young women to Ms. Harris.
The data shows that our efforts to get positive information out to young voters about commonsense conservative ideas well before the election are working. At the same time, we have much work to do to effectively reach younger women.
Concerns over high prices helped move young voters toward Mr. Trump. To win the long game, we need to connect the dots that show that liberal policies were behind the high prices and that conservative policies will help improve the economy and lower prices for all Americans.
• Scott Walker is the president of Young America’s Foundation and served as the 45th governor of Wisconsin.
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