It’s been less than a week since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee, and a Florida Democratic party activist representing young voters says the change at the head of the ticket has absolutely energized that part of the base.
“It’s a completely different ballgame,” said Jayden D’Onofrio, who chairs the Florida Future Leaders PAC, a political committee created to fund the Florida High School Democrats and the Florida College Democrats.
“And you’re already seeing it with the fundraising. You’re seeing it with people trying to volunteer with the campaign, and I’m seeing it here in Florida with the amount of people who want to get involved with our caucus, the organizing and the engagement on the ground in Florida.”
D’Onofrio said on Thursday that his PAC has raised more than $50,000 this month and received more than 200 contributions in just the first 72 hours after Joe Biden endorsed Harris and she became the de facto Democratic nominee (those numbers are not reflected yet on the state’s Division of Elections, which includes reports up to July 19).
An Axios/Generation Lab survey of 804 voters released Thursday shows Harris leading Donald Trump among voters aged 18-34 by 20 points — 60%-40%. Biden, on the other hand, only leads Trump among that demographic by six points, 53%-47%.
“I’m not surprised to see that,” said Brittany Lyssy, president of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans. It was obvious that younger Democrats weren’t that energized by the 81-year-old Biden, she said.
Polling conducted earlier this year showed a definite trend of Biden losing parts of the traditional Democratic base to Trump, specifically Black, Hispanic, and younger voters. Focusing on the latter, in polls taken in March, the shift from 2020 for adults aged 18-29 was about 13 points toward Trump, even though Biden still led the demographic by 11 points. Among adults aged 18-34, Trump held a slight lead of 1.5 percentage points, according to an aggregation of “subgroups” complied by former Democratic pollster Adam Carlson.
D’Onofrio said that shift in polling doesn’t necessarily mean young Democrats weren’t supportive of Biden but he asserted that younger Democratic voters in Florida are “completely in alignment” behind Harris.
“I don’t think it’s a lack of support for President Biden necessarily; I think that we know that he’s a great president,” he insisted. “It’s just that we wanted to see what the president ended up doing, which is passing the torch of leadership to the younger generation.”
Vance excites young Republicans
Although Donald Trump is now the oldest candidate in the race at 78, his pick of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate is exciting to young Republican voters, Lyssy said.
“He falls into the category of a Young Republican,” she said. “Our age range is between 18 to 40, so to see someone who’s 39 to be selected for the second-highest office in the United States is very exciting. And it’s a huge accomplishment for YRs across the country, because we’ve been fighting to see leadership like us, to see people our age in these offices. And the fact that we’re going to have a vice president so young is very exciting and it shows that leadership is starting to change.”
D’Onofrio said the influx of funding to his PAC will allow the hiring of 41 campus organizers in three legislative districts that he hopes to flip from red to blue this November: House District 37 in Central Florida, House District 91 in Palm Beach County, and Senate District 3 in Leon and surrounding counties.
House District 37 was the seat held by then-Democratic incumbent Carlos Guillermo Smith. He lost that contest to Republican Susan Plasencia by just 2,068 votes. D’Onofrio said that were approximately 14,000 registered Democrats and NPA voters aged 18-29 did not vote in that election who, with proper motivation, he believes could return the seat to the Democratic fold in November. Democrat Nate Douglas will face Plasencia in the fall.