'Incredible how much things can change': New alliance stoked to get Harris elected

Vice President Kamala Harris is gaining ground with America’s youngest voters, a new Axios/Generation Lab poll shows, less than a week after the launch of her presidential campaign.

For some Gen Z, born between 1997-2012, the opportunity to elect Harris, a woman of Black and South Asian descent, to become the next president of the United States is on par with how voters felt with Barack Obama in 2008.

Quentin Wathum-Ocama, the Young Democrats of America’s president, 33, says it feels a lot like the “Hope and Change” vibe of the Obama campaign in 2008, adding, “It’s incredible how much things can change in just a few days.”

Hoping to maximize their efforts, Voters of Tomorrow brought together 17 youth political advocacy groups representing tens of thousands of voters to join forces. This alliance aims to bolster Harris’ campaign in the final stretch, according to a statement released Friday morning.

More: Harris drawing parallels to Obama as young voters eye chance to be part of historic first

The groups are hoping their combined efforts could help get more young people to vote for the vice president this November, a voting bloc Democrats need more than Republicans and that President Joe Biden struggled to win over .

Wathum-Ocama said Biden’s decision to exit the race and Harris’ entrance into the race Sunday energized a group of campaign volunteers who weren’t feeling confident about the party’s odds in the fall.

“They feel good, and they feel like we can ride this into November. We can ride this up and down the ballot,” Wathum-Ocama, 33, said. “If you had called me last Thursday, what would I have said?”

With members on the ground in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., the coalition plans to knock on doors, run social media campaigns, and phone bank for Harris.

Santiago Mayer is the executive director for Voters of Tomorrow, an organization representing youth interests that brought the groups together this week. By uniting, he said, their campaign efforts will be more strategic and targeted.

“We want to make sure that we’re working together so that our efforts are additive, rather than duplicative,” Mayer, 22, said. “We’re going to have a single message, a single mission, and that message is: We have to beat Donald Trump . We have to elect Vice President Harris, and young voters are the way to do it.”

But as Republicans hope to reelect Trump, they are trying to widen the party’s tent, as seen in the Republican National Convention’s speaker lineup last week. Several speakers made appeals to voters of color and young voters as the GOP tries to chart its course to victory this fall.

Charlie Kirk, who founded the influential right-wing youth organization Turning Point USA, criticized the Biden-Harris administration during his speech on the first day of the convention.

“I visit college campuses, so you don’t have to,” Kirk said.

The College Republicans of America endorsed Trump in January.

On Thursday, Harris received backlash from some young people online who oppose U.S. support for Israel after she condemned “unpatriotic” protesters who burned the American flag outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress Wednesday.

But Progress Libs founder Maya Luna, 20, said she thinks “it’s a fact” that Harris is better positioned to beat Republican nominee Donald Trump than Biden.

Between “brat” summer messaging, coconut tree memes, and a first campaign ad set to Beyoncé’s song “Freedom,” it appears Harris has captured youth attention in a way Biden couldn’t.

“I didn’t think it was going to be a brat summer, and I’m so excited it is,” Wathum-Ocama said. “The last three to four weeks were really, really hard. To go from from really depressing dark news stories and all of the infighting to unity and then this really, really fun viral campaign — it’s honestly what the doctor ordered.”

Rachel Barber is a 2024 election fellow at USA TODAY, focusing on politics and education. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @rachelbarber_

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Incredible how much things can change': New alliance stoked to get Harris elected