Twelve days before the election, Letty Rios was spending her afternoon as she had many times before, and likely would several times again: trekking around another suburban Las Vegas cul de sac, encouraging residents to get out the vote. Wearing the white T-shirt uniform donned by all volunteers for Make the Road Nevada, a progressive advocacy organization, she slipped flyers in the screen doors of empty houses with practiced ease.

“I’m Hispanic. The majority of my community is going to be impacted, not only for myself, but for my parents too. I’m the first generation here,” Rios said, referring to the hard-line immigration policies of former President Donald Trump. “So this election really matters.”

Rios is an experienced canvasser. She began knocking on doors for political campaigns in high school and worked with Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign in 2020. She was disillusioned by the outcome of the last presidential election, and disengaged from politics for several years. But despite her initial hesitation about getting involved, Rios, now 22 years old, felt that this election was too important for her to sit on the sidelines.

If Vice President Kamala Harris wants to win, her campaign will hope that enough young voters swallow whatever hesitation they might feel and turn out to vote. Young voters played a pivotal role in the 2018 midterm elections that granted Democrats control of the House; President Joe Biden owes his 2020 electoral victory in large part to this same cohort. With the expected razor-thin margins in several swing states, whether young voters turn out in sufficient numbers—and who they support—could determine whether Harris or Trump wins the White House.

Nationally, Harris appears to have the edge; a recent Harvard Youth Poll found that likely young voters supported her over Trump by roughly 30 percentage points. But although Harris’s rise initially appeared to juice enthusiasm for younger voters, as evidenced by the influx of memes that accompanied her nomination, that sugar high of seeing a new candidate may have faded.

Meanwhile, in Nevada, more than a quarter of the electorate currently registered to vote is under the age of 35. With the implementation of automatic voter registration, the number of registered voters has increased dramatically in recent years. But rather than increasing either party’s rolls, nearly half of voters under 35 are nonpartisan—meaning that Republicans and Democrats see these unaffiliated voters as potentially up for grabs.

Rios said that many of her friends were more motivated to vote because of antipathy for Trump, rather than excitement for Harris. “They’ll be like, ‘Ah, fuck it, I’m just going to put Kamala and put it in the mail,’” Rios said. “They’re not particularly excited or eager to vote, but they’re like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do my part.’’’

Rios........

© New Republic