Young voters reflect on three election cycles with Trump on the ballot

Avery Dalal has never seen a presidential election without Donald Trump’s name on it. The 26-year-old from Texas is preparing to vote against the former president for the third time. He first did so in 2016, and he said the tone of national politics has since become more chaotic.

“It’s kind of hard to imagine having a normal election,” Dalal told NBC News. “I don’t even know what that means anymore.”

As Election Day nears, campaigns are making last-ditch efforts to court young voters like Dalal. But those younger millennials and older Gen Z voters who went to the polls for the first time in 2016 say they’re tired and disillusioned. That said, they’ve faced three election cycles where the stakes seem high, the candidates don’t feel fresh, and the Republican nominee remains the same.

Dalal said doomismracist rhetoricsexual abuse claims and widespread disinformation The national politics that have emerged over the last three election cycles have been dizzying. He said he was tired, and many of his peers were.

Natural cynicism

In 2016, first-time voters grew up witnessing a series of unprecedented events.

They watched their parents struggle through the 2008 financial crisis, participated in school shooting drills, witnessed the rise of online racial justice movements, and were some of the first people to grow up on social media. Dalal said that all this has led to the creation of a generation that is skeptical of the US political system.

Now in their mid-to-late 20s, they’ve reached a very different point in their lives, but the frustration remains.

“Cynicism influenced us growing up,” Dalal said.

Experts say that cynicism has both energized and exhausted young people, causing them to abandon party labels.

“They tend to be less partisan and motivated by issues in particular,” said Emily Slatkow, communications director for the progressive youth polling organization NextGen America. “Older Gen Z voters have memories of Trump’s election to office and the role his administration played in their lives, as well as the impact of the last few years under the Biden-Harris administration.”

Around each election cycle, messaging continues to take on bigger and bigger stakes; this year, democracy itself is on the line, according to the Democrats. Young people say it’s a lot of pressure, and sometimes it feels easier to shut down than get involved.

“Every election has been so important that there’s a weird extra pressure on it,” said Danielle Jober, 29, who plans to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. “So if the election didn’t go our way, I think a very large group of people would be discouraged by that and maybe not vote in the next election.”

Arizona resident Lauren, 27, said she’s tired of every election being presented as the biggest or most important election of her life. Those words made no sense to him, he said.

“Every year something big happens and it changes the whole world and there’s nothing we can do about it,” he said. “I can’t care anymore.” Lauren chose not to use her last name, fearing retaliation from Trump supporters in her area.

Community impact

Young voters say that 2016 felt like the beginning of a new timeline not only for them, but for the country. Cober supported Trump during the first presidential election that year.

The Florida native said he now regrets it, but community pressure in his heavily Republican town pushed him to make the decision. “I just did what my parents did, which is not what a voter should do,” he said.

Jober said he has watched his family and place of residence change since Trump’s campaign and election. Now, he avoids discussing politics with people he once could relate to on issues. In 2020, he voted for Joe Biden in the second presidential election.

“I feel that before 2016, they will see my aunts, uncles and grandmothers and have a healthy discussion about the upcoming elections,” he said. “Now I don’t even want to talk to my mom about the election.”

Other Gen Z voters say their entire adult lives have been full of similar interactions. Politics has become more hostile and polarized. It has changed how they move in the world, how they talk to their families, friends and peers, they said. They can barely remember a time when party divisions were less stark – and they feel it’s getting worse.

“I think that’s the saddest thing about what’s happened since 2016,” Jober said. “Before, people were very open. “They would talk about politics and it wouldn’t be like, ‘We can’t be friends now.'”

Raised in South Asia in Texas, Dalal saw change in her community as an 18-year-old high school student after Trump won. According to him, blatant racism from peers has become more common.

“I thought it was funny that he was running, but on election day he woke up very quickly,” Dalal recalled. “Especially going to school the next day… a lot of people at my school were happy with the outcome.”

Problems still haunt them

Fatigue and shame don’t mean young people won’t vote, Slatkow says. Their turnout has increased from 2016 to 2020, and he sees them joining the Harris campaign this year as a good sign.

Voter turnout between the ages of 18 and 29 jumped 44% to 55% between the two periods. While Trump is cashing in on the youththe age group as a whole still leans overwhelmingly Democratic, with Biden winning the group by 24 percentage points in 2020. Data from the Pew Research Center.

“This burnout can coexist with high motivation,” Slatkow said.

Lauren, an Arizona voter, said she voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016 but shifted to the right during the pandemic when she saw friends on unemployment making more money than they did in their low-wage jobs. He now identifies as a Republican, but dislikes Trump’s stance on climate change and abortion.

He sees promise in Harris’ candidacy.

“It’s great because I feel like it leans more heavily Republican than it has in the past,” Lauren said. “He doesn’t put his pronouns after everything, he doesn’t have to ask for his local rights before every Zoom call.”