Young voters reflect on three election cycles with Trump on the ballot

Avery Dalal has never seen a presidential ballot without Donald Trump’s name on it. For the third time, the 26-year-old from Texas is preparing to cast his vote against the former president. He did so for the first time in 2016, and he said the tone of national politics has only gotten more chaotic since.

“It’s kind of hard to imagine having a ‘normal election,’” Dalal told NBC News. “I don’t even know what that means anymore.”

As Election Day approaches, campaigns are making their last-ditch effort to court young voters like Dalal. But those young millennials and older Gen Z voters born in the mid-to-late ’90s, who went to the polls for the first time in 2016, say they’re exhausted and disillusioned. They’ve faced three election cycles where the stakes seem massive, the candidates don’t feel fresh and the Republican nominee has remained the same, they said. 

Dalal said the doomism, racist rhetoric, sexual abuse allegations and rampant misinformation that has emerged throughout the past three election cycles has made following national politics dizzying. He’s tired, he said, and so are many of his peers.

A natural cynicism

Those who voted for the first time in 2016 grew up witnessing a series of unprecedented events.

They watched their parents struggle with the 2008 financial crisis, participated in school shooting drills, witnessed the rise of racial justice movements online and were some of the first people to grow up on social media. Dalal said this has all led to a generation skeptical of the U.S. political system. 

Now in their mid-to-late 20s, they’ve reached a much different point in their lives, but the disillusionment remains. 

“Cynicism was baked into the way we grew up,” Dalal said. 

Experts say that cynicism has both activated and exhausted young people, causing them to abandon party labels. 

“They lean less into party divisions and are particularly motivated by the issues,” said Emily Slatkow, communications director for the progressive youth voting organization NextGen America. “Older Gen Z voters have that memory of Trump getting elected into office and his administration’s role in their lives, as well as the impact of the past few years under the Biden-Harris administration.” 

The messaging around each election cycle continues to take on greater and greater stakes; this year, democracy itself is on the line, according to Democrats. It’s a lot of pressure, young people say, and sometimes it feels easier to shut down than to get involved. 

“Every election just has been so important that there is a weird added pressure to it,” said Danielle Jober, 29, who is planning to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. “Because of that, if the election were to not go our way, I think there’s a very large group of people who would just feel discouraged by that, and then maybe not vote in the next one.”

One Arizona resident, Lauren, 27, said she’s tired of every election being touted as the biggest or most important of her lifetime. Those words have become meaningless to her, she said. 

“Every year there’s something that’s, like, big, and it’s changing the whole world, and there’s nothing we can do,” she said. “I just can’t f—ing care anymore.” Lauren chose not to use her last name for fear of retaliation from Trump supporters in her area.

Community impact

Young voters say 2016 felt like the beginning of a new timeline, not just for them, but for the country. When Jober cast her first presidential ballot that year, it was in support of Trump. 

The Florida resident said she regrets it now, but community pressures in her heavily Republican city pushed her toward that decision. “I just kind of did what my parents did, which is not what a voter should do,” she said. 

Jober said she watched her family and locality change after Trump’s campaign and election. She now avoids discussing politics with people she could once engage with on issues. In 2020, she cast her second presidential ballot for Joe Biden. 

“I feel like before 2016, like, I would see my aunts and uncles and grandma and they would have healthy debates about the upcoming election,” she said. “Now, I don’t even want to talk to my mom about the election.”

Other Gen Z voters say their whole adult lives have been filled with similar interactions. Politics has become more hostile and polarizing. It’s changed how they move through the world, how they speak to their families, friends and peers, they said. They barely remember a time when party divides were less stark — and they feel like it’s only worsening. 

“I think that’s kind of the saddest thing about what’s happened since 2016,” Jober said. “People used to be so open. They would talk about politics, and it wouldn’t be like, ‘We can’t be friends now.’”

Growing up South Asian in Texas, Dalal also saw a shift in his community as an 18-year-old high school senior after Trump won. Overt racism from his peers became more commonplace, he said. 

“I thought it was kind of funny that he was running, but it became very sobering very fast on Election Day,” Dalal recalled. “Especially going to school the next day … a lot of people in my school were happy about the outcome.”

The issues still driving them

Slatkow says tiredness and cynicism don’t necessarily mean young people aren’t going to show up to the polls. Their turnout increased from 2016 to 2020, and she sees their engagement with the Harris campaign this year as a good sign.

Participation of voters ages 18 to 29 jumped from 44% to 55% between the two cycles. While Trump is making gains with young men, the age group as a whole still overwhelmingly leans Democratic, with Biden winning the group by 24 percentage points in 2020, according to data from the Pew Research Center. 

“That exhaustion can exist at the same time as high motivation,” Slatkow said. 

Lauren, the Arizona voter, said she voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016 but moved to the right during the pandemic when she saw her friends on unemployment were making more money than she was at her low-wage job. She identifies as a Republican now, but she doesn’t like Trump’s stances on climate change and abortion.

She sees promise in Harris’ candidacy.

“Kamala is cool because I feel like she leans heavier Republican than previous Democrats,” Lauren said. “She’s not putting her pronouns after everything, she doesn’t have to claim Indigenous rights before every Zoom call.”