Disenfranchisement, disillusionment and “Call Her Daddy” (the podcast, that is) were all buzzwords at a recent Zócalo event that brought together civically engaged Gen Z members and Zillenials from across the country and the political spectrum. They discussed what Americans ages 18-29 want, what politicians get wrong about their voting bloc and the barriers that keep young people from turning out at the polls.
The public program, “Will the Real Young Voters Please Stand Up?,” was co-presented with LAist 89.3, the Los Angeles Local News Initiative, Boyle Heights Beat and CalMatters, with support from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. The event was held in downtown L.A. at the ASU California Center Broadway in the historic Herald-Examiner Building.
Moderator Christian Paz, a senior politics reporter at Vox covering the Democratic Party and the 2024 elections, started off by asking the panelists to talk about the biggest misconceptions people have when they talk about young voters.
Ava Mateo, president of 18by Vote, a nonpartisan, youth-led nonprofit, suggested it’s that young people in America don’t want to vote. However, their desire isn’t what keeps them from casting their ballots.
“We have a system designed to make it not easy to vote in many places across the country,” Mateo said.
At the same time, she said, many young people don’t feel represented by their politicians. “That’s partially because our representatives are not representative of Gen Z and younger populations. And that’s also because politicians don’t reach out to young people because they’re not high-propensity voters,” she argued.
Annie Wu Henry, a social media and digital strategy expert for progressive organizations and campaigns, agreed. “There is disenchantment, but it’s not because young people don’t care. And it’s understanding that those two things can happen at the same time,” she said.
What young people want, Henry said, is for “politicians to hear them and invite them in, and not just to hear them out, but actually to listen.”
Meanwhile, both presidential candidates are trying to get directly in the ears of young voters by appearing on popular podcasts that are a far cry from “60 Minutes.” Paz asked the panel: What can we make of former President Donald Trump going on “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von” or Vice President Kamala Harris appearing on “Call Her Daddy”?
“People are trying to get their demographics to show up to the polls,” said Joe Mitchell, president and founder of Run GenZ, a nonprofit that supports young Republicans running for office.
Trump, who will be appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast later this week, has been using podcast appearances throughout his campaign to target young male voters, Mitchell said. “Being able to get some of these endorsements that Mitt Romney or John McCain or George W. Bush never would have thought of getting, I think, has moved the needle for him particularly.”
“Is there a risk to having so many silos of media, particularly for young people encountering this information for the first time?” Paz asked.
Henry cautioned that young people may be digital natives, but “that does not mean they’re naturally media literate — those are two different things and skill sets.”
It comes down to making sure people have a civics education, Mateo said.
“With all of the different ways young people are consuming media, we really need to be teaching critical thinking and how to understand what a policy is versus a personality,” she said. She cited the nonpartisan coalition CivxNow as an example of an organization helping promote civics learning around the nation.
Mitchell shouted out the Community Notes feature on X, which gives users a means to add context to posts to counter misinformation.
“There’s a lot of information that I consume on that platform that maybe I would agree with, and I see it’s community noted, and I go and look at the data and why it’s been corrected,” he said. “I think it’s been a great thing from a civic discussion perspective.”
After the panel answered questions from the audience — where they continued discussing barriers to voting and raised the idea of creating a national holiday on Election Day — Paz asked the final question of the night: Do we think we’ll get record turnout this year among young people?
“I like to stay optimistic,” said Mateo, who brought up the 11-point increase in turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds from 2016 to 2020. “There’s more money being invested in this election than I think has ever been invested before. We’ll see if it pays off.”