Following the Sept. 10 debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, when Taylor Swift endorsed Ms. Harris and posted a link to vote.gov on Instagram, approximately 406,000 people — many of them millennials and members of Gen Z — registered to vote within 24 hours. The unexpected outpouring was among the most recent shockwaves in the 2024 presidential race.
Bringing out young voters 18 to 25 had been critical to President Biden’s win in 2020. Since his surprise announcement that he would not run again this year, many young Democratic-leaning voters have, according to pollsters, felt more energized — including those right here on the South Fork.
“I think there is a sense of optimism that’s been received,” said Noah Wenner of East Hampton, 18.
A senior at the Loomis Chaffee School in Connecticut, Noah called the Democratic National Convention “quite a highlight and hopeful moment.” Since then, he said, his worries have given way to a feeling of excitement.
Kym Bermeo, a 2022 graduate of East Hampton High School who is studying psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, said Ms. Swift’s endorsement “personally didn’t have much of an effect on me, but I do see it as extremely helpful . . . there’s a lot of power in the influence of pop stars, especially Taylor Swift on white women, and white women voters are so important in this election.”
According to Tufts University, in the 2020 race, 45 percent of voters ages 18 to 29 in New York State went to the polls in 2020. Turnout among 18 and 19-year-olds that year was 39 percent. The university noted that the 18-to-29 figure was “an “11-point increase from 2016.”
The energy shift locally seems pretty clear. “I would have voted for [Mr. Biden] either way, but the sentiment was like, ‘anyone but Donald Trump,’ “ said Jon Lopez of East Hampton, 25. There were two options and “that’s all you got, pick not the worst one.”
Kym Bermeo, who identifies as nonbinary Latinx, also said their initial stance was “anything but Trump. I wasn’t too happy with Biden as a candidate, so when Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate, it made a lot of voters here very enthusiastic about wanting to vote and being hopeful in our candidate.”
Mr. Lopez was interviewed on Aug. 27, not long after the convention. “There [were] voters in 2020 who were thinking of not voting in 2024,” he said, “and I’m not gonna lie, like, honestly, that was almost me.”
He is not alone. “I’m feeling more optimistic now,” said Leah Fromm, salutatorian of the E.H.H.S. class of 2024, now a freshman at Cornell University. President Biden “was a great candidate,” she said, “but it’s really hopeful to know there’s a space for women in upcoming elections.”
Ms. Fromm, a registered Independent, agreed with Mr. Lopez back in August that the Harris/Walz campaign had yet to spell out its policies. “It feels like they’re pointing out the negatives of Trump’s campaign,” she said, “instead of pointing out insights of their own campaign.”
Issues that matter most to voters in the 18-to-25 age range include the preservation of human rights for women, immigrants, and the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community.
“These are all very, very important to me,” Bermeo said. “That’s why I was always ‘anything but Trump,’ because those rights are going to be demolished if we went with Trump again.”
“I am a woman and have a mother who is an immigrant from Colombia. Women’s rights, along with immigration issues, are very important to me,” said Sophia Tucci of Springs, 19, who is studying to become a medical assistant. “I want them to be handled with care. I feel as a voter, I have a responsibility to vote for women’s rights for every woman, even those who don’t find the matter very important to them. I have witnessed how distraught my mother is with the discussion of immigration, and as her daughter, this makes this extremely important to me as well.”
Mr. Lopez would like to hear more about housing and affordability. “Young people trying to live in the Hamptons have to think twice about it,” he said. “We’re being thrown into a world that doesn’t work for us anymore.” This is front of mind for him not only in the presidential election but for local elections as well. “It sucks being a younger voter and knowing that at some point you won’t be able to live here anymore,” he said.
“Housing prices proportionate to income” is a primary issue for Dante Sasso of Amagansett, a 20-year-old student at Brandeis University who is majoring in physics and economics. The cost “keeps rising. That is a weakness for both candidates — they don’t talk about it as much as they should. I think that’s one of the strengths of Tim Walz — he seems very practical and has put in a lot of liberal policies that people find popular, that are economically populist.”
For Noah Wenner, climate change is the top issue. He called it “a single existential threat, and it needs to be addressed. I’m worried because we’re already way past when we should have acted.”
One thorny issue for some young voters is Vice President Harris’s pro-Israel stance in the ongoing war with Hamas. “It is incredibly disappointing,” Bermeo said. “However, again, for me . . . it’s picking the lesser of two evils.”
Ms. Tucci said that “neither candidate is perfect, so sometimes they evoke concern, for me, in certain areas of discussion. I get angry when I see false claims being made by both candidates. Because of the issues I mentioned that are important to me, I also do feel fear about how they will play out.”
Over all, though, many young voters do appear more involved with current events. “I think the biggest difference is how popular Kamala Harris has become, especially among younger people who aren’t already engaged,” Mr. Sasso said. “A lot of them don’t know about politics. Very few are registered to vote. . . . Now that Harris is here, she has energized a lot of young voters. They will take the time to vote for her because they see a brighter future.”
“Three months ago, it felt like I was just voting against Donald Trump, and with Kamala Harris I’m hoping it can change,” Mr. Lopez said. “I want her and Tim Walz to be candidates that I can vote for — be something that I can take pride in, rather than ‘I’m voting against Donald Trump.’ ”
