Young people in the US are looking for Democrats to embrace economic populism and authentic candidates willing to fight for them, says the new leader of a group dedicated to youth voter mobilisation.
Victoria Yang is the interim president and executive director of NextGen America, an organisation that engages young people through voter education and registration. She succeeds Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, who held the post for four years.
In an interview with the Guardian, Yang criticised Democrats for failing to grapple with daily cost-of-living concerns and urged the party to learn from Senator Bernie Sanders and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (AOC) focus on pocketbook issues.
NextGen recently commissioned Tulchin Research to conduct six online focus groups with swing voters aged 18 to 26 in battleground states. The focus groups found the young voters were anxious about their financial future and the rising cost of housing, food and education. Many felt the system was rigged, with billionaires riding high and working people short of opportunities.
These concerns ranked far higher than the war in Gaza or so-called “woke” topics such as gender pronouns. Speaking by phone from Boston, Yang said: “Right now what they’re feeling is the everyday things that are affecting them: the cost of groceries, gas prices, paying for rent. That is the number one issue; we need to be focused on that.
“There’s so many other issues as well but that’s what our priority is: connecting with them on these issues and how, if they get involved and make their voices heard by voting, by volunteering, by signing petitions and fighting back, they’re going to make the change that they want to see.”
The focus groups praised progressives Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez for their willingness to fight and directly address economic concerns. But last year’s Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, who moderated some of her policy positions during the campaign, was seen by many as inauthentic.
“What our focus group showed was that economic populism is still resonating with young people and their messaging was not. If you go to the grocery store and you’re now paying $6 or $7 for a gallon of milk and you were paying $4, you’re now having to stretch your dollars further, and those little incremental increases all add up. The house that you’re trying to save for, or trying to pay for college, has a domino effect.
“The Democrats were not leaning into that. We need to be leaning into making sure that young people understand: we hear you, we see you, this is what we’re trying to do and then laying out a plan for that.”
Yang knows what she is fighting for. She was a small child when her family fled political persecution in Laos, spent time in a refugee camp in Thailand, then, 45 years ago, settled in southern California.
“I am living proof of the American dream and all the things that it holds. My mom, a single parent, put us through college and worked hard. I remember the struggles of having to figure out how to put food on the table. She did it as a waitress in a small Chinese restaurant.”
She also knows her way around the Democratic party, having worked with the Obama Foundation’s Girls Opportunity Alliance, Democratic National Committee and former senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer. She takes over at NextGen at a moment when the party is embroiled in an identity crisis amid fears that young voters have veered to the right.
Yang says NextGen’s work shows the value of consistent engagement. In eight key states last year, 67% of the young voters that NextGen registered and communicated with regularly went on to cast a ballot, compared with 54% youth turnout nationally. The lesson for Democrats is that it is not enough to show up late and take young voters for granted.
Yang continued: “You can’t expect that you’re going to knock on young people’s doors the last two or three months of the election and then say, you should vote for candidate A and B, when the whole time you’ve never spoken to them or engaged them.
“The message that we want to make sure people understand and the party understands is that you have to invest in young people. They’re at the very beginning of their voting journey and they haven’t developed the voting muscle yet. They have to be educated.”
The focus groups found that TikTok was the dominant platform for this generation, and Instagram and YouTube are also very popular. Most participants do not seek out news but look to creators who are funny, authentic and able to make complicated subjects easier to understand.
Yang commented: “We have to make sure that we can help them understand what is at stake and talk to them authentically through the platforms and the way they want to be engaged. That’s what this is all about.”
Democrats failed in this objective, Yang argues, by arriving late and over-relying on traditional media. NextGen is exploring new methods, such as an artificial intelligence chatbot on community platforms such as Discord, and an explicitly non-partisan approach to encouraging voter registration.
Much has been written about how Donald Trump outplayed Democrats by exploiting the “manosphere”, appealing to young men through rightwing influencers and podcasters. But Yang believes that economic imperatives eclipse gender, race or other variables.
“Inflation, tariffs, the cost of living – that resonates whether you’re a man or woman, Black, brown, yellow or red. That’s what will connect with young people. They might not identify with the Democratic party but the issues that are important to them resonate across all genders and all sectors.”
Young voters favored Harris over Trump in the 2024 election by four percentage points, a much smaller margin than the 25-point advantage young voters gave Joe Biden over Trump in 2020, according to AP VoteCast data. Opinion polls suggest that the shift was especially pronounced among young men.
Participants in NextGen’s focus groups felt that Democratic party has lost touch with people it claims to represent. They described Democrats as weak, too willing to roll over and disconnected from everyday concerns. Some described Democrats as a “mom”, caring but overprotective, while Republicans were seen as a “dad”, assertive and focused on discipline and control.
Only 36% of Americans view Democrats favourably, according to a new Economist/ YouGov poll, but Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s Fighting Oligarchy Tour has been rallying big and enthusiastic crowds. Yang remains optimistic and hopeful for the future.
“Senator Sanders and AOC are talking on the issues. It’s less about the party. It’s less about even candidates or anything like that. It’s an economic populist message and that is what they’re leading with. The party is probably seeing that and getting the message but we still have to continue to engage and work on it.”
Young people are persuadable, she added. “Just because they voted maybe for Trump in this election doesn’t mean that we don’t have an opportunity to get them in the midterm, in the next presidential, if we meet them where they are, if we engage them all year round now until then. That’s the key message.”
Yang’s commitment to economic justice, a social safety net and giving young people a fair shot was shaped by her own experience. As an immigrant, she benefited from government programmes such as welfare assistance, free school lunches and a Pell Grant, which provides federal aid for college students with exceptional financial needs.
“That helped to define me and brought me to this work. The country as a democracy has provided all these opportunities. I want to make sure that these policies continue so when folks need it they have a safety net but also be able to create a life. It was transformative in so many ways and now I get to sit here and have a conversation with you.”
