The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Courts Young Voters

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Young voters historically vote for Democrats. But, former President Trump's style and rhetoric are drawing attention among some casting their first ballots. We went to a conservative convention in Detroit to learn more. This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, campaign reporter Elena Moore, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Jackson from Portland, Oregon. I just clocked off work. I'm currently on my way to go play a couple holes of disc golf while I listen to today's episode of the NPR Politics Podcast. This episode was recorded at 12.37 p.m. on Monday, June 17th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be trying to make the most of this beautiful weather. All right, here's the show. Great. Hope you get a hole-in-one. I don't know what a hole-in-one is in disc golf, but I hope he gets one. All right, here cover the campaign. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, young conservative voters and their support for former President Donald Trump. Alina, you just spent the weekend in Detroit covering the Turning Point Action Conference.

There's a lot to discuss from what you heard from voters there. But first, can you explain what Turning Point Action is for the uninitiated. Yeah, sure. So Turning Point Action is the advocacy wing of Turning Point USA, which was started because of Republican concerns with free speech on campus, you know, them not having a place at high schools and colleges. And it's really grown into this big national organization focused on engaging young people on conservative issues. So this event was one of many events that the larger Turning Point Network does. And it's basically like a big party for young conservatives. I'm happy to talk about this because we've talked a lot about young voters and historically younger

voters tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic. They voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden in 2020. But there also seems to be a lot of enthusiasm among younger voters for Donald Trump. So what about Donald Trump is drawing these younger people in? I mean, they kind of just love everything about him. They like his vibe and his platform. And like you said, it's really fascinating because I cover a lot of the discontent with Biden on the left among young people. And that's not there for Trump. And albeit it's a smaller group, but these voters are there and they're quite loud. You know, I talked to over a dozen people under 30 at the event, and they like that Trump pushes more of an isolationist platform. They want him to focus on issues like the economy and immigration, which we know are

top voting issues for all ages. That's where they're at, too. A lot of them have these more socially conservative ideas, which were like really big topics at Turning Point. How much of their fealty to Trump is about issues and how much of it is about his kind of anti-establishment personality? I think it's kind of a mix. Like they do enjoy that vibe of him. Like I talked to multiple young people who said, we want bold change. We want, you know, honesty. And he gives it to us. He's not like the traditional Republican Party.

I heard it really clearly from 21-year-old Georgia student Alexander Warren. He's totally on board and he's not looking back. The thing is, is that Trump is the most anti-establishment guy we got. The Republican Party of old is gone. They are dead. They are clinging on for dear life. And Trump is the guy to get in and clear out the swamp. And we are excited about that.

And the interesting thing there is, like, as we know, like, Gen Z folks under 27 have grown up during Trump and have many of them come of political consciousness during these really divisive times. And a lot of them have become Democratic voters because of it consciousness during these really divisive times. And a lot of them have become Democratic voters because of it, you know, are voting for Biden and voting for Democratic issues. And so this other side, it's smaller, but, you know, they're picking up when Trump's putting down. Mara, I say this a lot on the podcast that an unenthusiastic vote counts as much as an enthusiastic vote. But it does seem when it comes to young people, base voters, there is another reality in this election where Donald Trump continues to have a really profound kind of enthusiasm that Joe Biden just does not seem to inspire in the same type of voter on the Democratic side. Right. I mean, organic enthusiasm cannot be created by tens of millions of dollars in an ad campaign

or even a grassroots organizing campaign. I mean, it's priceless. Organic enthusiasm is priceless. Otherwise, you're just pushing on a string. And he does have that. It seems among people who are for him, they're really, really for him. And everything that happens to him, like being found guilty of 34 felony counts, only makes him even more anti-establishment and more of an outlaw,

which it sounds like these young voters really like. Oh, yeah. And I heard that at this conference. I asked everyone I spoke with. The verdict was recently, what do you think? And they either said it's bogus or they said this is going to help him or they were like, you know what? Everyone's already made up their minds. Like, we don't care because we're here for him. You know, like there's no changing that. And Trump's mugshot was on T-shirts. There were T-shirts that said voting convicted felon 2024. Like they're celebrating this and they're totally rolling with it. Elena, this also made me think about when you talk about the enthusiasm for Trump and that voter that we heard is that one of the things is that Gen Z does tend to feel

more pessimistic about the future than other comparable generations. And it does sort of make sense that there could be an appeal by the candidate who most wants to break the system as it has been, that the sort of revolutionary kind of change that Donald Trump talks for in a way could find an audience among young people who feel like the country's really off track. Yeah, I mean, I think it gets back to growing up in that time that they only know political division. And, you know, a lot of these kids were born during the Iraq War, maybe their parents lost a job in the recession. They've been in college during COVID or now, you know, ahead of this next election. And I think these voters are looking for somebody they think is strong and confident and honest that will like kind of cut through the noise in their opinion. And and that's Trump to them.

All right. Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk Elena, I'd love to drill down a little bit more into who these voters are and how they're feeling right now in this race. Obviously, Joe Biden won young voters by a double digit margin in 2020. What does polling tell us about where younger voters are right now? our PBS News Marist poll, it's a statistical tie. Biden leads by just two percentage points, which is within the margin of error. And that is really striking because, like you said, I mean, Biden won among young voters in 2020, voters under 30, by 24 points. And I would say that that poll, and we've seen that in other polling, like it's very tight. But I think to equate 50 percent of the youth vote with Trump is not true because we know this generation is fueled by a lot of Democratic-backed ideas, protecting abortion access, curbing gun violence, addressing climate change. And so it doesn't completely line up with what we know about this generation. But what we do know is that voting for Trump is the protest vote right now,

is the way to say you're against the incumbent. You don't like the way things are going. But it does show you how much Biden is struggling to keep his base coalition together. And young people are a really important part of it. I'm also curious what that room looked like when you were there. There were thousands of people there attending this conference.

How diverse was it? I mean that both in terms of gender and in race, because polling would also suggest that the movement towards Trump is really coming from men, that young women are getting more liberal and young men are getting more conservative. And I'm curious of just what your experience was seeing people there. The conference was overwhelmingly white. Obviously, there were folks of color there, but it definitely was not a diverse crowd.

And the attendees at this conference were not all young. I mean, there were older voters there. Turning Point actually put out a crowd size the day that Trump spoke, and they said there were 8,000 people there, but they told me 3,000 were students. Just anecdotally, I saw a lot of people who looked maybe upwards of 65 sitting in the audience. So it kind of really depended. And then on gender, anecdotally, it looked to lean more male. I don't have numbers on that. I think about when I was in this one session in the morning, they do these like breakout sessions to talk shop kind of. And there was like a college Republicans one.

And it was very heavily male. And these are like young men. I mean, and the conference put an emphasis on the politics of men and not forgetting about men, which we've we've kind of seen Trump tap into. And that was a thing that the speakers mentioned and that young male attendees brought up that he kind of hears them more. Is the tone to their politics angry? Did they share Trump's grievances, his anger at the world? Like, is there hope and optimism from these younger voters or is the conversation you have with them like they are coming from a really angry place into politics? I think it's anger, but with optimism at the end of the of the road.

That student, Alexander Warren, who I talked to, told me that 2020 was a really formative year for him and his politics. The Black Lives Matter movement, you know, January 6th, all of that made me realize that there is a weaponized force against especially especially, you know, your American men in this country. You know, the emasculation of the American men has gone too far. And us as American, we're not going to accept it anymore. I think, again, that like speaks to this smaller group of young people who feel kind of forgotten or left out of the larger Gen Z movement, which we know is very racially diverse and just more leaning left. That interview with the student was really, really interesting. And he clearly has been listening to a lot of hyper-right media, including the Trump right, it's a very young, male-oriented movement, as Sue has

pointed out. Mara, earlier this year, I did reporting on sort of what drives the political decisions in generations. And a woman I interviewed, Dr. Jean Twange, who's a scholar on this, and this has stuck with me from that, says political attitudes are actually shaped really young, like in childhood and youth, even before people can vote. And there's an element to this generation and in Trumpian politics, which has like broken all the rules of modern politics, like how this shapes future generations, how this is going to shape Gen Z today, what they are as adults of the future is one of these like really fascinating questions in political science that I'm curious to see how it plays out.

Yeah, look, historical rules only work till they stop working. But one historical rule we thought we believed in was that the political inclinations you form during your young years stay with you throughout your entire life. What's interesting to me is these young people grew up during a period of tremendous gridlock, paralysis, problems not getting solved in Washington. Then there was the financial crisis. Then there was the pandemic. And then there is kind of what I call the evaporation of the American dream. No, even if you work hard and get an education, you're not going to do as well or better than your parents. And that makes the appeal of a strongman, a demagogue, a right-wing populist like Trump very appealing. We've seen this throughout history. Elena, do you know if these young people there agree with Trump and now most of the Republican

Party that they will not accept the results of an election that he doesn't win. Anecdotally, I think talking with people, they cast doubt on 2020. I think it's a very accepted belief now that Trump has been wronged many times and the 2020 election, in their view, is like one of those wrongs. It came up a lot in the conference and the crowd would react very strongly when people would say, we're not going to let this happen again. You know, Trump has this new phrase too big to rig to like get so many people to turn out. There's no way people can rig the election, which we know is not true. That did not happen in 2020. So I think that like, yeah, it's like one of many now normalized parts of the like hyper

right support he has. All right, let's leave it there for today. But before we go, I want to thank everyone who supports the show by signing up for NPR Politics Plus, especially this election year, your support really matters. And if you haven't signed up for NPR Politics Plus yet, now's your chance. You get things like sponsor-free listening and bonus episodes. And in our latest bonus episode, we get behind the scenes with Ximena Bustillo. She shares what it was like covering Donald Trump's historic criminal trial in New York last month. To sign up for Plus, just go to plus.npr.org slash politics. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

I'm Alina Moore. I cover the campaign. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.