The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk is having a galvanizing effect on the conservative movement as both parties prepare for next year’s midterm elections.

In a sign of how young conservatives are already mobilizing, Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk co-founded and led, announced last week it had received 37,000 new chapter requests in the 48 hours following the shooting.

While the midterms are just more than a year out, Republicans say the mobilization of young conservatives builds upon a trend of young voters increasingly voting Republican.

“The youth have taken this as sort of a shot against them,” said Matt Whitlock, a GOP strategist and former senior adviser to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Kirk’s death has evoked comparisons with the two assassination attempts against President Trump in the run-up to last year’s election. Like the Trump campaign did following those incidents, Turning Point USA has invoked Kirk’s assassination in its fundraising calls to supporters.

“In the same way that Trump supporters really rallied to President Trump when he was attacked, young Americans feel like someone who really cared about and spoke to them being attacked is a similar rally cry,” Whitlock said.

That rallying cry was broadcast loud and clear last week, when Kirk’s wife, Erika, predicted the impact her late husband’s death would have on the political landscape and the country as a whole.

"You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife, the cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry," Kirk’s widow said in an address last week.

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