‘I’m so exhausted’: How young Americans are feeling about the election

Taken from the Autumn 2024 issue of Dazed. You can buy a copy of our latest issue here.

The night before President Biden announced he would drop out of the presidential race, ending a month of speculation and escalating madness, an especially tuned-in friend told me over drinks that he’d been having nightly stress dreams about the election. The dreams were not just about the outcome but also the future of our democratic state, which never seemed so fragile. “It feels existential,” he said, and took a big gulp of something called a WAP (Wet Ass Peaches) martini. It was the end of a long few weeks. Biden and former president Donald Trump debated, beaming on to primetime a sitting president who could no longer string a sentence together. Then someone tried to assassinate Trump with an AR-15 at a campaign rally, successfully nicking his right ear. He emerged to do a survivor’s lap around the Republican National Convention, naming JD Vance, a man who spent most of his memoir’s press tour calling Trump an idiot, as his running mate. When Biden dropped out, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, it signalled the remaking of the race from something old – leathered, really – to something entirely unfamiliar. When Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor who popularised ‘weird’ as an attack line on the Maga-ist threat to democracy, was announced as her pick for VP in August, momentum seemed to swing in her direction.

Those of us born after 1996 are the least likely age group to agree that voting is the most effective way to create change. The world as it’s been handed to us looks to be breaking at the seams, spearheaded by leaders who indulge in pathological visions of lifelong power and enable disorder. The news breaks in snippets, short clips of longer speeches that are spliced into ‘edits’ set to music or turned into memes, whether you want to see them on your feed or not. “Wait, one second,” says Prachitha ‘Prach’ Porika, 24, over video call. She removes her background (an ultra-high-definition globe) for a few seconds, revealing Biden-Harris 2024 signs hung up around her bedroom. “I kind of do that to intentionally propagandise myself,” she says, laughing. Prach entered election season as a fan of Marianne Williamson, a Texan Democrat and ‘spiritual guru’ to Oprah Winfrey, before running for – and winning – a district delegate position in her hometown of Cumming, Georgia. She ran because she cares about climate justice and reaching across the political divide, and she wants young people to be more invested in the nuts and bolts of politics.

On TikTok and Instagram, Porika films short ‘day in the life’ vlogs about public service, pulling inspiration from influencer Alix Earle’s format. A President Harris is an exciting prospect after several high-stress days of limbo. “She’s a great public speaker, and she’s also an Indian-American woman, and it is so important to me to see people in these positions,” she says. Later, Porika adds, “the collective consciousness probably needs four more years to get ready for Marianne”.

By no force other than the hands of Father Time, Harris is now at the white-hot centre of election discourse. If she wins, she would become the nation’s first female president, as a multiracial woman born to an Indian-American mother and a father born in Jamaica. Four years ago, her presidential campaign registered as an abject flop. If she succeeds in November, it would not be because she earned the nomination through competitive achievement, but rather had it hot-potatoed into her lap.

“I don’t hear anything about Kamala in a serious sense,” says 23-year-old Kyndal Hill. Hill was born and raised on Chicago’s South Side and counts education and “decent healthcare” as her top issues. “I’ve heard she’s super quick to lock people up. It’s like, yeah, you’re a Black woman, but you’re not for the people. There’s a big separation between candidates running for president and people who look like me and come from where I come from.” Indeed, Harris’s track record as a prosecutor and attorney general of California came under close scrutiny during her run for president in 2020, launching a wave of “Kamala is a Cop” memes that may or may not have stalled her momentum. (One featured Harris’s beaming face superimposed on to that of a police officer handcuffing a little girl.)

“I’m praying that Trump has some sort of conversion after what he went through. At this point, I’ve never been so fired up to vote for him” – Mary-Logan Miske, 24

Carson Keller, 26, answers my call from his home in Emmett, Idaho, a small mountain town in a conservative stronghold. He tells me that, if he were not to vote in the election or write ‘ceasefire’ on the ballot, it wouldn’t move the needle in the state. But he would like to be able to vote for someone who reflects his values. He’s also terrified of a second Trump presidency and Project 2025, which he thinks will lead to four years that are “worse than a nightmare”. Project 2025, organised by the Heritage Foundation, is a conservative blueprint that includes deprioritising climate change, criminalising pornography and consolidating executive power, leading critics to denounce it as a blueprint for autocracy. Trump has distanced himself from it; the Heritage Foundation brags that he embraced two-thirds of its recommendations during his first term as president.

“I’m so exhausted by the system, by my daily life, by everything going on,” says Keller. “I hate to sound jaded but I do really feel disempowered. I feel so distraught by the situation that I have no choice but to feel apathetic because if I lean into the distraught-ness I will become depressed. You know what I mean? And I would rather yield to apathy than depression.” When Biden’s resignation letter was posted to X, I texted Keller for his thoughts. He was in the car with his boyfriend, having just learned the news from a New York Times push notification to his Apple Watch during brunch. “It feels like a repeat of 2016, with the establishment choosing a candidate and forcing it down our throats,” he replies.

“You know the saying, ‘If you’re young and you’re not a liberal, you don’t have a heart, and if you’re old and you’re not conservative, you don’t have a brain?’” Virginia ‘Ginny’ Britto, 27, asks. She plans to vote for Trump but has a soft spot for Vivek Ramaswamy, who is closer to her age and outside the political hive. In general, she tries not to romanticise political figures. All of them have to “play ball” at some point. Social security is whittling down to peanuts. In her home - town of Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she would like to move after graduating law school in Memphis, basic ranch-style houses start at $350,000. “I don’t know if I would say I’m Maga,” she says. “That can mean a lot of different things to different people. Nobody has conversations any more. And how can you even have a conversation when the premise is a misunderstanding?”

“Boring!” Faith Merrill, 18, mouths in a TikTok video, using a popular sound from dance-coachturned-convicted-felon Abby Lee Miller. “Yawning! Sloppy! Lazy!” Her arms are crossed and she rolls her eyes, pantomiming that she couldn’t be less bothered. The ‘flawless beauty’ filter that turns human features doll-like is switched on. It’s a favourite of Alix Earle’s, great titan of bipartisan appeal, whom she watches sometimes. The text on the screen shows phrases she encounters online as a female conservative: “You’re voting against your own gender. Enjoy having no rights. You’re a bad person because you support [flag of Israel]. So embarrassing for you as A WOMAN that you’re supporting TRUMP!!!” “I’ve always been a Trump girl,” says Merrill over the phone. She lives in Niceville, Florida, right in the Panhandle, where self-described “firebrand” Matt Gaetz serves as the congressional representative. She felt like God called her to politics after attending Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit in 2023. Turning Point, a billionaire-backed ‘grassroots’ organisation focused on mobilising conservative youth, offers students an open venue to talk about their right-leaning ideologies without judgment, something that made Merrill cry at her first event. In March, she became the organisation’s designated Hype Squad captain.

When people shuffle through the doors at Turning Point events, it’s awkward. No one knows each other. No one is talking. People stare at their phones and scroll back through old messages. “Our job is to go around while the music’s playing and get everyone, essentially, hype,” says Merrill. The “Cupid Shuffle” plays. Then “Cotton Eyed Joe”. When high-profile speakers take the stage, pyrotechnics shoot off and confetti rains from the ceilings, and attendees are given the good news: they are in a battle between good and evil, angels and demons, so when you lost friends because you said you were a Republican and teachers tried to make you feel stupid in class, it’s OK. A sign of virtue, even. There’s a greater purpose to all this.

Audrey Leach, 19, who is also involved in the Turning Point universe, speaks with cool assuredness about her views, most of which align with the official Trump platform. Among them are President Biden (“incompetent”), California governor Gavin Newsom (“ridiculous”), abortion (“killing humans”), sensitivity (“for the weak”), Trump’s legal woes (“all a lie”), and the racism of calling Covid-19 ‘the Chinese virus’ (“I mean, I understand that, but at the end of the day, he [Trump] is raw”). When I ask about her election night plans, she laughs. “Oh! I’ll be partying.” Her Trump 2024 shirt will be on. She’ll be wearing her favourite hat that says “Pretty Girls Vote Republican” on the bill. She plans to light up fireworks and then head to the shooting range with her similarly yoked friends in Fort Worth, Texas. “I cannot wait,” she says.

“I understand how a lot of people may feel like all skin-folk ain’t kinfolk and don’t want [Harris] in there. However, in my opinion, it’s time for us to ride for our good sis to defeat Trump” Brad Blackburn III, 23

Daniel McGarvey, 26, voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, changing his registration from Republican to independent midway through Trump’s first term. He knows for sure that he won’t vote for Trump this time around, but isn’t ready to commit to Harris 2024, although he says it’s “nice to have someone who at least seems coherent and reason - able”. “I’m in the camp of not being pleased with the options,” he says. “I just don’t like Trump at all. Arrogant. Mean. Wouldn’t want to leave him alone with my kids, if I had kids.” He’s mostly just tired of hearing about him all the time and is nostalgic for an old-school, John McCain-type candidate who would talk about things like the ballooning deficit and high interest rates. “It’s frustrating how cultish [the GOP] has become,” says McGarvey. “The Trump stuff has made people more… fanatical. I’m not sure why he, of all people, seems to be so compelling. It all just makes me scratch my head.”

Lili North, 23, met Mary-Logan Miske, 24, when they were both college students involved in the pro-life movement in San Diego, California. “The girlies, we all follow each other,” North tells me. Their first event together was the Women’s March in 2017, where millions protested the deterioration of women’s rights that Trump’s election threatened, not least reproductive freedoms. The two teenagers held anti-abortion signs and braced themselves for confrontation. Since then, branding has evolved to match their interests – recently, Miske started making “baby eras” merch that represents the stages of gestation through Taylor Swift albums (four weeks is, naturally, her debut). Both she and North expressed frustration that Trump has wobbled on pro-life issues, expecting – with some level of entitlement – reflexive support for his role in overturning Roe v Wade in 2022. “It was just the start of the fight,” says North. “I’ve gone on a rollercoaster of emotions. At one point, I considered not voting at all,” says Miske. The assassination attempt was a “wake-up call” for her. “I’m hoping and praying that Trump has some sort of conversion after what he went through. Maybe he’ll turn to his faith. I think that would be a really beautiful thing to see. But at this point, I’ve never been so confident or fired up to vote for Trump.”

Miske and North, who believe abortion should be outlawed, are statistical aberrations. Democratic leadership would rejoice if abortion was the issue of the election, which bends in their favour when turnout is high, especially among 18-29-year-olds. In midterm exit polls, young people were the only age group to cite abortion as their number one priority. Threequarters of them agreed that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. At a campaign event in North Carolina, Harris, who became the unofficial mouth - piece for the Biden administration’s reproductive rights platform, raised the stakes. “Make no mistake,” she told the audience. “If [Trump] gets the chance, he will sign a national abortion ban and outlaw abortion in every single state. But we are not going to let that happen.” (Trump has suggested conflicting views on a federal ban, sometimes within the same sentence.)

In June, Trump appeared on Logan Paul’s video podcast Impaulsive in a move to reach the under-25 crowd. The teaser he posted on TikTok, which showed him squaring up against Paul and then breaking into giggles, was seen 151m times. Before Trump sat down for his interview, he handed Paul and his co-host, Mike Majlak, T-shirts with the mugshot taken after his fourth indictment. “No way, no way,” the two grown men squealed, holding the shirts up to the camera. The mugshot, like the image of Trump raising his fist seconds after being shot, blood streaming from his ear to his mouth, is a cultural moment the Democrats have not been able to replicate.

Harris might have come the closest. “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” she asked in a speech last year, echoing words spoken by her mum when Harris was a child, before abruptly turning phil - osophical. “You exist… in the context of all in which you live… and what came before you.” The word salad circulated around X, then became a sound on TikTok, before turning into the disassembled juggernaut of a mature meme when it seemed like she could be the next president. Harris was never particularly likable, hitting record lows in vice presidential favourability ratings, no doubt compounded by biases against race and gender. The meme circled back around to make her prepackaged awkwardness almost endearing; she benefitted from the context of all in which she lives (a political establishment in chaos) and what came before her (a chief executive who could not, at that point, wax poetic with such vigour).

The memes kicked off the first 24 hours of her campaign. Harris supercut into Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us”. Harris being sworn in, a femininomenon! The coconut tree speech mashed with Charli XCX’s “Apple”, the buzziest song of the summer. “Kamala IS brat,” Charli XCX posted on X, the highest praise she had the power to bestow. In response, the Harris team (‘Kamala HQ’) followed the singer, turned her X background Brat-patented lime green, and churned out memes of their own. Later, Beyoncé granted Harris permission to use the song “Freedom” in her campaign. Harris was not just having a brat summer, she was brat summer embodied. Jaelyn Richter, 27, says her viral TikTok edit of Harris spliced with Chappell Roan’s “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl” came about “based on vibes”. The “boppy music videos,” she says, provide a much-needed “sense of camaraderie and belonging”.

“I think I’ve burnt out on politics four times already, honestly. But I could never just walk away knowing that these things are changeable, and we can make them better” Amelia Montooth, 27

Amelia Montooth, 27, and I speak the night before she travelled from her home in Brooklyn to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “I have so much Fomo about everything, even Republican things,” she says. The plan is to film content for TikTok and Instagram, where she has built a small following for explainer videos about politics and internet culture. She wanted to have a mix of manon-the-street interviews and trends, like the ‘Apple’ dance. It worked: her video (“doing the charli dance outside the RNC until they stop hating gays and start loving brats”) went viral on both platforms. Charli XCX liked it.

“I understand that people are overwhelmed by how much suffering there is in the world,” says Montooth. “I think I’ve burnt out on politics four times already, honestly. I’m from Arizona. Arizona has passed some horrific laws, especially related to abortion, these last few years. But I could never just walk away from politics knowing that these things are changeable, and we can make them better. [Because] we have to.”

On TikTok, Brad Blackburn III, 23, speaks directly to his fellow “radical leftists” who find themselves at odds with Harris’s prosecutorial record: “I under - stand how a lot of people may feel like all skin-folk ain’t kinfolk and don’t want her in there. However, in my opinion, it’s time for us to ride for our good sis to defeat Trump.” Blackburn, who works at a nonprofit serving homeless youth in Seattle, Washington, calls Kamala HQ “genius” and tells me he feels for Harris, whose progressive ideals could have been stifled as vice president in a moderate administration. The alternative, Trump, represents an enshrinement of Christian nationalism. “The religious trauma has weighed so heavily on my heart thinking the world wouldn’t accept me because I was gay. I’ve felt the judgment, I’ve seen it. I know what it’s like to feel othered,” he says. To him, Jesus is a figure of “love and light”, not to be co-opted for political ends.

Layal Srouji, 25, spent the spring and summer months thinking about the value of archival mate - rials – how to preserve artefacts as evidence and keep them from capture by powerful institutions. Her studio art practice evolved in tandem with her organ - ising work for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which generated national attention for its occupation of the school’s campus in April. The sudden rallying around Harris after Biden dropped out was “a little bit alarming,” she says. “I just don’t have any belief in the system to begin with. I don’t think there are two par - ties. I don’t think there’s any difference between who is elected beyond optics. In the case of Palestine, either way, these people are aligned with Zionism.”

Srouji says she is undecided on whether she’ll vote in November. She moved to Boston, Massachusetts from Nazareth as a girl and, as a Palestinian, feels that voting for either candidate would be like “voting against [her] humanity”. She has been thinking about what it would be like to be alive 100 years from now. She believes there are ways to live in this moment that subvert the “colonial lefto - vers” of America, and other structures of governance to explore. “I don’t know what it would look like,” she admits. But she has seen enough to convince her there is room for the seeds of something new to grow, or at least the market of disillusionment for it.

To indulge in optimism for a moment: it seems true that faith in politics has deteriorated across the ideological spectrum in the US, but that should not be mistaken for indifference. The detachment we see is from the flattening mechanisms of politics; there is still a desire to see structural change. The candidate looking to win the ‘youth vote’ in November would do well to speak to the broadness of young people’s political imaginations, not down to it.