Republicans Declare War on Young Voters

× Expand Ryan Stanton/Ann Arbor News via AP Hundreds of University of Michigan students wait in line to register to vote at the Ann Arbor city clerk’s satellite office at the university’s Museum of Art on November 8, 2022.

After Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss to Barack Obama, the Republican National Committee published a water-thin self-assessment, which was known as the “Growth and Opportunity Project” or, colloquially, the “RNC autopsy.” What was a revelation for some Republicans brought out smirks from others. The party was not “cool” like Obama, and did not appeal to people of color, women, or, especially, youth: “Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents … On messaging, we must change our tone—especially on certain social issues that are turning off young voters. In every session with young voters, social issues were at the forefront of the discussion; many see them as the civil rights issues of our time.”

The party’s best and brightest wrung their hands over this for a nanosecond, and then swiftly turned to Donald J. Trump, who put a MAGA gloss on “growth and opportunity” and seeded that into the GOP brand. A decade later, the Republican Party is a reactionary, dystopic gerontocracy that still recognizes its severe deficit with young voters, and has decided that the best way to deal with that is to erase them from the electorate, beginning with college students.

There are several different realities playing out at once. First of all, the data indicates that the overall youth vote in the 2022 midterms was relatively anemic. Only 23 percent of eligible youth voted, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). That was down from the 2018 midterms, when 28 percent of eligible young voters cast a ballot. The top three turnout states in 2022—Michigan, at about 37 percent; Maine, at nearly 36 percent; and Minnesota, at 35.5 percent—were down more than eight percentage points from 2018. One battleground state, Georgia, saw a seven percentage point drop from 2018.

And yet, though young people barely turned up, the ones that did surged into the Democratic camp. Young voters spotlighted their annoying habit, as far as Republicans are concerned, of showing up when and where it counts, generating wins for Sen. John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Gov. Tony Evers in Wisconsin, and an even narrower one for Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the early-April state supreme court contest in battleground Wisconsin sent GOP operatives over the edge. Though turnout was similar to the midterms in some University of Wisconsin precincts, the share of the vote for state supreme court justice-elect Janet Protasiewicz was higher than the totals Evers received and tipped the high court to the Democrats for the first time in more than a decade in the officially nonpartisan contest.

Rather than assess the quality of GOP candidates or messaging in the aftermath, former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker blamed Protasiewicz’s huge win on “liberal indoctrination.” Cleta Mitchell, the GOP lawyer who tried to help the former president subvert the 2020 election, declared that polling places close to dorms, a previously unknown threat to the republic, somehow made it easier for packs of college sloths “to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.” She suggested new restrictions on campus voting sites.

Some Republican lawmakers have been very clear about views on suppressing the college vote.

Top Trump consigliere Kellyanne Conway worries that the Democrats have created “a turnout machine” peopled by “social media influencers,” as if some blue campaign consultants had suddenly stumbled onto GOTV and pop culture. Her conclusion was less about deleting young people’s rights to vote, but still rather vague. “We got some work to do on the young people who think differently on abortion, perhaps, guns or climate change.”

If that means, perhaps, tweak outright abortion bans to add a few exceptions, or perhaps work harder on bills to allow teachers to carry guns, or encourage people to mouth the words “climate change,” and then young people would vote Team Red, those operatives should, but won’t, recall another 2012 observation: “Young voters need to be attracted to the Republican Party by both the message and the candidate.” CIRCLE found that the most important issue by far in the 2022 midterms was abortion, followed by inflation, crime, gun policy, and immigration.

If GOP messaging was too messed up for young people in 2022, it’s really mangled now. Some Republican lawmakers have been very clear about views on suppressing the college vote. They have prohibited young people from using student IDs for voting in Idaho, but have come up short, so far, in prohibiting out-of-state students from voting in New Hampshire.

The Wisconsin state supreme court vote showcased young voters’ wrath toward the party that confirmed the six Supreme Court justices who struck down a right that some people unfortunately assumed was inviolable. As anti-abortion states double down on extreme bans that eliminate exceptions and try to extend their reach into safe-harbor states, there is no path forward with most young voters for a party that embraces extreme views on human fertility. Some people are voting with their feet. From 2022 to 2023, states with abortion bans saw a 10.5 percent drop in applicants for ob/gyn residencies, according to Association of American Medical Colleges data. Idaho, which recently criminalized assisting minors seeking abortions without parental permission, is seeing outflows of maternal health care specialists.

Republicans’ rejection of effective gun control has produced an entire generation of people who have come of age deeply scarred by the psychological trauma of gun violence. They endure neighborhoods wrecked by crime or are educated in schools featuring security guards patrolling hallways and regular active shooter drills, if not both. The Spring 2023 Harvard Youth Poll found that more than 40 percent of respondents fear being victims of gun violence. Overwhelming majorities also support psychological exams for gun purchases and assault weapons bans, like the one that recently passed in Washington state.

Young people know that the Republicans’ refusal to take the climate crisis seriously will hit them hard. Fifty percent of the youth poll respondents also agreed with the statement “Government should do more to curb climate change, even at the expense of economic growth.” With recent flooding in the Western U.S. and entire places swept off the map by tornadoes in Mississippi, House Republicans came up with a plan to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act’s program of environmental and climate justice initiatives laced together with tax credits.

“It is clear that young people are not just a necessary part of a winning Democratic coalition, but the keystone precondition for Democratic victory,” four national youth advocacy groups—March for Our Lives, Gen Z for Change, Sunrise Movement, and United We Dream Action—wrote Tuesday in a letter to President Biden after his 2024 re-election campaign announcement. “The equation is simple. When Democrats energize and mobilize our generations, they win elections. When they don’t, they lose.”

A Biden second term drums up little enthusiasm though: His approval rating in the Harvard survey stands at 36 percent. Stalling on issues like gun control and student debt, which have since run into court challenges, has irritated young people, as have moves like approving the Willow pipeline in Alaska and supporting the multistate Mountain Valley Pipeline.

But as unpopular as Biden is, Trump is what disaster in real time looks like, and young voters generally know it. What was true in 2012 for Republicans sounds like a wickedly gross understatement today. “Our Party knows how to appeal to older voters, but we have lost our way with younger ones. We sound increasingly out of touch.”