Teresa (right) and Blake (left) Robertson of Caledonia Michigan stand outside a rally where former President Donald Trump was set to speak in Grand Rapids on April 2, 2024 (Photo: Anna Liz Nichols)
It’s the first presidential election since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Vice President Kamala Harris is attempting to become the first woman to occupy the Oval Office.
New female voters, some of whom were in fourth grade when former President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, are now able to head to the voting booth — and their ballots could prove decisive if the race is as tight as analysts expect.
And whether they’re bejeweled in sparkly blue jackets or red MAGA hats, Millennial and Gen Z women are turning out at campaign events all over Michigan as Harris and Trump make their pitches to be the country’s next commander-in-chief.
But talk is cheap, said Carly Rose Hammond, 28, who’s running as a Democrat for City Council in Saginaw. She wants to see what candidates will do for her.
“I want you to show me how you’re going to support women in your administration, because it’s important to know what your stances are on abortion. That’s very important. But, I want to see your policy to make things better for women from where they’re at right now,” Hammond said.
Trump is casting himself as women’s protector against crime and illegal immigration — adding at one rally that he’ll do so “whether the women like it or not.” Harris, on the other hand, has centered her campaign on abortion rights, trying to win over young voters with concerts and celebrity allies like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.
And Swift has already demonstrated her political power, even without appearing at a single Harris event, despite endless speculation.
Voter registration inquiries spiked more than 400% after Swift endorsed Harris following the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to data firm TargetSmart, with more than 400,000 individuals going to Vote.gov through a link on Swift’s endorsement post.
Swift signed her endorsement on Instagram as “Childless Cat Lady,” holding one of her three cats as a jab at Trump’s running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, who in 2021 commented on Fox News that “childless cat ladies” like Harris were running the country. Harris has two stepchildren.
“We are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too,” Vance said, explaining to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that Democrats without children don’t have “a direct stake” in the nation’s future.
The Harris campaign has enthusiastically embraced the “Eras Tour” artist’s stamp of approval and has been courting young voters with friendship bracelet-making stations at events as a nod to Swift’s “You’re On Your Own Kid” from her album “Midnights.”
Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in particular, often references the singer, telling a crowd in Wisconsin a few days after Swift’s endorsement, “It’s really great to have all of these women help us beat the smallest man in the world,” a reference to Swift’s song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.”
The gender gap and economic worries
There’s been a gender gap in elections dating back to 1980 — and this year looks to be no different.
Women have gone to the polls with greater numbers than men in every U.S. presidential election since 1964. The Center for American Women and Politics, finds that in recent years, about 10 million more women register to vote than men.
Polling and historical analysis suggests that the gulf between men and women ages 18 to 29 may be even wider in the 2024 election. Young women are gravitating to Harris’ campaign and young men are shifting more to Trump, who has been actively courting them this cycle.
One recent Harvard Youth Poll reflects that the gender gap between men and women ages 18 to 29 has doubled since the spring.
In 2022, Michigan Democrats won big on the issue of abortion rights, maintaining control of executive offices and flipping the partisan control of the state Legislature months after Roe v. Wade was reversed with the Dobbs decision.
But this election is about being seen, Hammond said, noting that presidential candidates are scouring the state for votes from different demographics and geographic areas in order to gain an inch in a neck-and-neck race for Michigan, a critical battleground state.
Hammond pointed to the war in Gaza as being a critical issue for many young voters who oppose President Joe Biden’s support for Israel. Some who voted “uncommitted” in the February presidential primary continue to be torn about who to vote for at the top of the ticket. And both Harris and Trump, as well as third-party candidates like Green Party nominee Jill Stein, are trying to woo supporters of the pro-Palestinian movement.
Hammond is voting for Harris, but she says the threat of abortion rights being rolled back in Michigan if Trump wins might not be enough for all the young women voters Harris needs to show up in the election.
“The most pro-women policy in my area would be rent control. The most pro-women policy in my area would be public housing,” Hammond said. “If it’s always, ‘You’re going to lose these rights. You’re going to lose these rights.’ You’re not seeing me; you’re seeing my vote and I think that translates to people who are especially on the fence, to people who are not sure whether or not they’re going to turn out to vote in the first place.”
Economic concerns also top the list of many young women who plan to vote for Trump.
At an October campaign rally in Detroit, where Trump promised “a stunning rebirth” for the city, Samantha Kaufman, 24, said she’s worried that if Trump doesn’t get elected it could impact her plan to open up a home care business with her dad.
“I think it doesn’t matter if you’re a woman, I don’t think it matters what color you are. … I think he’s for the country, which is what we need. I mean, there’s so much devastation that’s going on in our world right now, in our country. And I just don’t think any of it would be happening, at least a huge majority of it, if he was in office,” Kaufman said. “And I think that we’re screwed. … I’m scared for our country. I’m scared for the people that I’ve met here.”
Politics weren’t always a major topic of conversation in her family, Kaufman said, but now she gets her mom and friends to join her at Trump speeches whenever she hears about them.
“I fell in love with Donald Trump; I feel like there’s a lot more to him. He’s always been famous. He’s always been well-respected from the people that now go very far against him,” Kaufman said. “I think that he knows too much, and I think they’re terrified at what Trump knows and I think that he’s trying to, in a way, save our country, save us from the things that go on that so many people don’t know about, you know, like people that are way higher up than us.”
Although she believes the majority of Americans are voting for Trump and the only thing that could stop him is election interference, Kaufman said she hopes young women look past some of the rhetoric surrounding abortion.
“I get so mad at the people that don’t support him, that think that he’s just against those rights,” Kaufman said. “I think that a lot of people have it wrong about Donald Trump.”
The Swift factor
On Hope College’s campus, one of Michigan’s many Christian colleges situated in traditionally conservative West Michigan, senior political science student Audrey Brennan, 26, sits on a nearly entirely female governance board for the college Democrats group.
And while she sees a lot more men turning to the right at Hope College this election cycle, some have bucked that trend.
“The public discourse around the Democratic candidate being a woman, seeing her as a DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] candidate and just degrading her because ‘she’s a woman and it’s a man’s job.’ … As the Republican Party has been attacking her. … I feel men see themselves represented through the presidency. There’s always been men. I think seeing a more powerful female candidate might just be something they’re not used to,” Brennan said. “Especially within churches, women don’t have leadership positions in the same way as in government.”
Men who are used to seeing themselves in positions of power within the church and in Congress are likely being pulled closer to Republicans this election as “humans tend to be uncomfortable with what they’re not used to,” Brennan said.
Brennan added that Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comments show that the Republican Party isn’t interested in young women like her until they give birth.
The Democratic Party recognizes more versions of motherhood and makes attempts to reach out to women, not placing their value solely on their parental status, Brennan said. Telling young women voters that they are valued as people resonates with voters.
“It’s really frustrating to see women who aren’t interested in just being birthing machines to be called ‘childless cat ladies.’ I think that’s very degrading to women. They should be able to make their own choices. … If they want to have children, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s also great,” Brennan said.
One of Trump’s biggest donors, Tesla founder Elon Musk, responded on his social media platform, X, to Swift endorsing Harris, by writing: “Fine Taylor … you win… I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.”
While Hammond doesn’t identify as a Swiftie, she said Musk’s comments stood out to her as a Freudian slip of how the Trump campaign views women in this election.
“Women are always treated gross — that’s not news. Women are thought about by politicians and men in power in very gross ways, based on consumerism rather than seeing people as human,” Hammond said.
Swift said in her 2020 documentary, “Miss Americana,” that it was the violence she faced in being groped in 2013 by a radio DJ and going through the grueling process sexual assault victims endure in court that pushed her to break her silence about politics.
“I couldn’t really stop thinking about it,” Swift said. “I just thought to myself, ‘Next time there is any opportunity to change anything, you had better know what you stand for and what you wanna say.’”
And when it comes to what people think of women celebrities getting involved in elections or who they date or how many cats they have, the “Shake it Off” singer, now in her 30s, has tossed aside the “1950s sh-t they want” from her, wearing pink and telling her fans how she feels about world events.
And as fans await Swift to reclaim her name and her voice by rerecording her debut album, “Taylor Swift,” and her sixth album, “Reputation,” Sarah Herrick told the Michigan Advance in August that Harris is in her own “Reputation” era. Herrick, 26, from Lansing, believes the vice president isn’t playing anyone’s little games or playing the fool in this election.
“It definitely emulates taking back your reputation, owning your reputation and being who you are, coming back to life,” Herrick said, while wearing a “Reputation” shirt to Harris’ massive rally with Walz at the Detroit Metro Airport hanger. “Republicans and Trump supporters, they want to smash her down. They want to say, ‘Oh, she’s not capable of doing it.’ And she’s coming back and saying, ‘No, I am here. I am. I’m already vice president. I’m going to be president, too.’ I feel like that’s very ‘Reputation.’”
The Michigan Advance spoke to Herrick before Swift had publicly endorsed Harris. But Herrick said she knew Swift was going to support Harris, saying the two influential women have the same core values. Voters who are pro-women’s rights and pro-LGBTQ+ rights know that like Swift, Harris is telling haters, “They need to calm down.”
“I wouldn’t ever say I’m a ‘political person,’ but when it comes to the times that I need to be political. I’ll be political,” Herrick said. “On occasions like this, where it’s like we’re making history today, I want to be on the right side of history.”
Some young women now voting in this election were in elementary school when “Reputation” came out in 2017. They may also have not seen the Washington Post’s 2016 stories of Donald Trump’s infamous “Access Hollywood” video, where he said because he’s famous, he can “do anything to women” including “grab them by the p–sy.”
But the video has been making the rounds with young women on TikTok during the last weeks of the campaign.
Republican women ‘shake off’ Trump’s comments
Comments from Vance about single women or “mean tweets” from Trump don’t matter much to Jacky Eubanks, 27, who ran for a seat in the Michigan House of Representatives in 2022. Although she won the coveted Trump endorsement, she lost the GOP primary.
Eubanks is proud to support Trump again this election.
“I’m not a cat lady. I’m not a cat person. … I’m a dog person and I do intend to have children. I’m not somebody who’s decided to be childless my whole life, whereas there are women who either have decided they want to be childless their whole lives, or women who never did get married and never did have kids, and maybe that’s a pain point for them,” Eubanks said. “I take a mean tweet and $1.98 gallon worth of gas over what we have now. Honestly, you kind of need a leader who’s going to be a bit rough and tough, especially if he’s going to go up and talk to people like [Vladimir] Putin and Xi Jinping.”
Women are smart enough to look past “semi-uncouth” comments from the former president and realize the U.S. has a border crisis, grocery prices are inflated and Michigan is in the middle of a housing crisis, Eubanks said.
And it’s a misconception that young women are only going to vote on one issue: abortion, Eubanks said. Not every woman under 30 supports reproductive rights, but every young woman is going to have to figure out how to build a life in an economy that isn’t suitable for their success right now, she said.
Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of Republican young women looking to run for office, Eubanks said.
“When you are a young, conservative female and you do announce your candidacy, there is generally a lot of excitement because it isn’t super-common,” she said.
Lagging representation in government is an issue for both parties, but one that particularly affects Republicans. Women make up just under 33% of seats in state legislatures in 2024, according to the Center for Women in Politics, with Democratic women holding 1,583 of the nation’s 7,386 seats, and Republican women holding about half as many at 815 seats.
One Gen Z woman who is trying to put a younger face on the Republican Party is former Miss South Dakota Amber Hulse. The 26-year-old is running for the state Senate in the Mount Rushmore State in an area where the average age of voters is 65 and up.
“In my primary election, I was painted out to be this blonde bimbo who didn’t know what she was doing. … I was going up to the door of someone who’s just received a mailer saying all that,” Hulse told the Michigan Advance.
When you’re young, people assume you know nothing, said Hulse, who graduated from Georgetown University law school and has interned for Trump.
“Going door-to-door was the best thing that I ever did, because I think there’s a perception of young people … that we are liberal leftists that have no brains in our heads. … I think I really changed people’s perspectives, and it gave people hope, because there are a lot of older people. … They want to hand over our country to the next generation. They want to make sure that it continues to be protected the way that they hoped it would be.”
Conservative women are needed in government as young women voters around the country have to think about what the future holds for their children, Hulse added.
The next generation of women voters (You’re on your own, kid)
It’s not so much that politics are of interest to teenagers — it’s that politics has taken an interest in them.
That was what a group of Cass Technical High School students told the Michigan Advance after a campaign event for U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) in Detroit last month.
After hearing about the death of Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old woman who died a preventable death due to the hospital’s hesitation to perform a medically necessary abortion under the ban Georgia had enacted one month prior, Kendall Smith, 17, said she worries about her future in this election.
“Somebody just died and it’s like, how? If one person died, plenty others are probably dying,” Smith said. “Let’s say, God forbid, I get raped. What am I supposed to do? What if it was my sister or my mom or something? That would be horrible.”
The political divide is wide and there’s seemingly no room for middle ground, said Nadra Binford, 17, especially on the abortion issue. She thinks eligible voters could do with having some empathy for the young girls that will inherit the next configuration of government.
“I feel like that’s a really big problem with the upcoming election, you need to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Imagine you were someone in that situation. For example, you need an abortion in a state where it’s banned. Put yourself in that situation. … She’s giving birth to a child; she’s a child herself,” said Binford, who wants to be an engineer. “And when somebody says something … they wouldn’t even understand the pain that she’s going through. Usually, men always like to put their two cents in that conversation.”
Although she and many of her peers at school aren’t old enough to vote in November, Smith is already thinking about the future of the economy and access to medical care for Black women, who face worse health care outcomes and higher maternal mortality rates compared to their white counterparts.
But young people aren’t voting like their lives depend on it, Smith said. They act like they’re “too cool” to participate and then they don’t know why different laws are being put into action around them.
High school students have been in a state of fight or flight for years and have disengaged with the news and politics as a form of self-preservation, Smith said, recalling what her news feeds looked like during the COVID-19 pandemic and the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
“Every day, another Black person was just getting shot up and killed, or [there was] a new lynching. … It was just being put in our face over and over. Us being brought up with that, I feel like it did a lot to us. That’s why our generation is so sensitive … the social media trauma,” Smith said.
She tried to pick her battles until the battle picked her, Smith said. And even though she and other young women don’t have voting power in this election, Smith said she’d like to pursue work in advocacy, using social media for good when she graduates.
Being a witness 24/7 to troubling times as a result of smartphones that have kept Gen Z well-informed is tough, University of Michigan sociology professor and researcher Pamela Aronson told the Michigan Advance. They’re still dealing with the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, which killed more than 40,000 people in the state.
“Gen Z hasn’t caught a break. … If you think about the kinds of things that this generation has faced … It’s overwhelming and exhausting,” Aronson said. “They really feel abandoned by older generations and sort of feel like political institutions, political leadership, particularly before the pandemic. [And] also the institutions that are designed to support them like educational institutions, they really just feel like older adults are not as concerned about their generation as they should be.”
Educational leaders and mental health professionals in Michigan have sounded alarm bells of a youth mental health crisis in the state, largely centered on the long-term impacts of the pandemic.
But even with young people retreating to entertainment on TikTok, the platform has become a popular news source for individuals of all political backgrounds. And the presidential campaigns are meeting them there. Trump’s Tiktok sits at 12.3 million followers and the MAGA account is nearing 100,000. Harris’ Tiktok sits at 6.1 million followers and Kamala HQ has 4.8 million followers.
“The first time I really saw anything directly from Kamala’s campaign was probably on Tiktok,” recalled Mari Montgomery, 17.
Potentially having a president that looks like her and other Black girls and women dares people to hope, said Montgomery, who wants to be a clinical psychologist.
“After this, I don’t want to see another presidential ballot where every candidate is a white man. I want to see a space where people feel like they can go and do more things,” Montgomery said.
Harris isn’t the first woman to earn a major party nomination, Aronson points out, recalling how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost the fight at 2:30 a.m. in 2016, when the Blue Wall states slipped out of Democrats’ hands. When she lost to Trump, there was a lot of talk about Clinton’s likability, her outfit choices and her voice.
“But really that likability is about gender … what your expectations are for a woman,” Aronson said. “Women candidates have a hard line to walk. They can’t be too tough, because then they’re not relatable. … But they also can’t be too nurturing or sensitive.”
The way Harris talks to young people and about young people is appealing to Montgomery, who says she likes “politicians who are people, too.” They’re capable and willing to talk about things that aren’t politics, meeting people where they are.
And that’s how the Democratic National Convention got on a lot of young people’s radars, Montgomery said, with 200-some content creators invited to cover the event, even though some had never discussed politics in their videos before.
The Kamala HQ TikTok is genuinely funny and clearly run by young people who understand trends, said Binford. And in an election where the stakes are so high for young people, having a little fun is better than some of the candidate-bashing ads she says have taken over Youtube.
Juliana Sanchez, 18, is one of the few students at her school eligible to vote in November and as the child of immigrant parents who are not eligible to vote, she says she feels the weight of responsibility to be heard in the election.
Conversations with loved ones in her family on the election pose certain challenges. Sanchez said she doesn’t want to be seen as disrespectful when she has opportunities to ask relatives why they’re supporting Trump, but she’s finding ways to pose important questions in her family.
“Honestly, to me, there really isn’t a good president, but like, there’s for sure one that would be able to make this state better, like a better place,” said Sanchez, who wants to grow up to be an immigration lawyer. “I never thought of voting, but because of the circumstances that are currently happening with this election, I have to vote.”
The Cass Tech students the Michigan Advance spoke to said they were particularly excited that Harris brought Megan Thee Stallion on stage in Georgia at a July rally.
“She knows how to appeal to the people that are voting for her. The youth are voting for her,” Binford said.
Outside an October Vance rally in Waterford, Daniela Kovatch, 16, also brought up the Grammy Award-winning singer known for hits like “Savage” and “Plan B.”
But Kovatch told the Michigan Advance that she’s not so sure that Harris has managed to convince young women to vote for her, adding that she thought Megan Thee Stallion’s performance was unprofessional considering that Harris is essentially giving a job interview right now to the country.
“That was very jarring, for sure, because I believe in professionalism on both sides. … As an American, you want other countries to view you as sophisticated … especially considering how long this country has been around and the power that we have held,” Kovatch said. “That creates laughter probably from the other countries … and that also can affect our safety, too, because if they see that we look weak or we’re not in the game. … Who knows what could happen, especially with wars going on.”
Kovatch isn’t eligible to vote in this election, but national security and border security are top issues for her. Her goal is to work at a company like Raytheon or Lockheed Martin and design missiles and work in air defense “to keep this country safe and free.”
“I did JROTC for a year, so I’ve always been interested in the military,” Kovatch said. “I believe that is the foundation of keeping America safe. I mean, to be powerful is to also be protected.”
Vance’s visit to Waterford was the first campaign rally that she and her older sister, Kinsey Verbeke, have attended this election cycle. The sisters from the Flint area expressed interest in doing their own research this election rather than accepting what other people are saying at face value.
This is Verbeke’s second time voting in a presidential election. The 25-year-old says she has flipped from voting for Biden in 2020 to supporting Trump this time around.
“I used to be a hardcore Democrat, but this cycle I’ve been leaning more towards Republicans. … I did vote for Biden last election. This election, I do plan to vote for Trump,” Verbeke said. “I did follow the bandwagon and a lot of what I was seeing online tended to lean more towards the liberal, Democratic sector of things. So I feel like I kind of just got swept up in that.”
Between the 2020 and 2024 elections, Verbeke said she became a mom and a lot of her priorities have changed.
“I just had an awakening,” Verbeke said. “That has definitely shifted my mindset and reproductive rights, I do agree with the way that Trump handled it. … I used to say I want government not to have a say about my body and it’s nice to see that it’s being brought to our vote and our say now.”
As Election Day is upon us, it’s clear that Trump and Harris have taken different paths in appealing to Gen Z and Millennial women voters. As Taylor Swift might say, Harris is counting on women not leaving the Dobbs decision in the past, because there’s nothing like a mad woman, while Trump offers a “long live” toast to the Blue Wall states he crashed through eight years ago as he ends his campaign, once again, in Grand Rapids.
After all, both candidates know all too well every vote counts in Michigan.
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