By Elise Hammond and Shania Shelton, CNN
(CNN) — After graduating from high school in 2017, N’Dea Gordon entered the workforce. Deterred by the high cost of college and the prospect of thousands of dollars of student loans, her plan was to work her way up in the service industry, get promotions and gain skills that could help her build a career.
But years went by, and the wages didn’t go up, leaving her with only one option: She had to go back to school and hope the investment would pay off.
“I wasn’t able to get raises in my workplaces at all, and the minimum wage just wasn’t enough. I would kind of just go to jobs hoping that if I worked hard enough, they would see my efforts and at the very least they will train me to have new skills that I could carry into a different job so that I could get more income. But that just hasn’t been happening,” Gordon said.
Gordon is one of the countless young voters who’ve cited the economy and cost of living as among their most motivating factors to vote this November in an election they have the power to help shape. Along with the economy, young voters also name abortion, immigration, foreign policy, climate and gun control as other priorities.
Gordon, who is 25 years old and lives in Columbus, Ohio, is in her first year of a cybersecurity program at Western Governors University, an online school. As a student, she feels the pinch of rising food prices and the cost of housing and rent – which she said have gone up an “exorbitant amount” in the past year. She said she has been struggling to find even a studio apartment she can afford.
“When you have a majority of the population struggling to take care of their basic needs, I think there needs to be a little bit of a reassessment,” she said.
A recent GenForward survey conducted by the University of Chicago supports what dozens of young voters told CNN. Asked what was the most important problem facing the country, 12% of US adults aged 18-26 picked economic growth, 11% said income inequality and 10% chose poverty.
The two presidential nominees – former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris – seem to be aware of how crucial young Americans will be this fall as they’ve looked to reach these voters where they are, whether that is Trump posting TikToks with Gen Z internet personalities Logan Paul and Adin Ross or Harris embracing her own memes, from coconut trees to a “brat” summer.
Here’s what the young voters CNN spoke with said about the issues they care about this election:
Economy and cost of living
The Federal Reserve slashed interest rates this past Wednesday – the first rate cut since March 2020. The half-point move paves the way for lower borrowing costs on everything from mortgages to credit cards and marks a crucial milestone for the central bank’s historic inflation fight.
But Americans’ attitudes toward the economy remain shaky, with many voters saying that the cost of goods and housing is still too high.
Vivek Rallabandi, 21, is upset about how President Joe Biden has handled and talked about the economy for the past four years. Rallabandi, a registered Republican in Pennsylvania who considers himself a moderate, said he feels like the president has downplayed Americans’ concerns, approaching the rising cost of goods with a “very nonchalant” attitude that has not sat well with him.
“I’m very disappointed with his handling because he’s really not even acknowledging the issue exists, and I’m not sure the vice president is at this point either,” Rallabandi said. He said he wants someone in the White House who will implement “greater fiscal discipline and a more serious attitude toward the issue” of the economy.
After the first presidential debate between Harris and Trump earlier this month, Rallabandi said he’s still “not thrilled with either” of the candidates. In an email, he said he didn’t think Trump articulated his vision for the economy very well and was instead circling back to other topics like immigration. As for Harris, Rallabandi said she “displayed verbal poise,” but he wonders why she hasn’t implemented her economic proposals as vice president.
“So how can I expect that she will do anything different? It’s very difficult to see her as the ‘change’ candidate when she’s been in office for four years,” he said.
Darius Diggs, 22, agrees that a change in economic strategy is what the country needs. The Phoenix native, who works for a conservative nonprofit, said he disagrees with the Biden administration’s approach of demand-side economics – the idea that creating a high demand for goods is the way to grow the economy and stimulate spending and jobs.
Instead, Diggs said the US should focus on creating more high-paying job opportunities by incentivizing companies to not outsource jobs, with steps such as lowering the corporate tax rate and removing some regulations. It’s a viewpoint that Diggs said some would call “trickle-down economics,” but he said he believes a boost in these high-paying positions – combined with more fiscal responsibility, less government spending and lower interest rates – is what would help the economy.
Chaim Birzen, who is from Rockland County, New York, said the issues he cares about are driven through the lens of his Orthodox Jewish faith. Birzen, who is 26 and has three children, said the economy is one of his biggest issues because “we have very big families and the average GDP is not sufficient enough for the needs of an Orthodox Jewish family in the area we live,” pointing to the cost of private schools.
“That’s also why I think that young voters in my area are voting more Republican because we, like, from a young age, from 23 or whatever, we start to live an expensive life,” he said. “And unlike most young voters in America, I think, that are just living on the campuses and have no expenses, and they have no clue what real life is all about. I think that they first start to understand it when they get 30, 35.”
Several younger Trump supporters also echoed this concern about the economy and inflation, telling CNN at a campaign rally in Montana last month that the issue was a big motivator for them to turn out in November.
Tyler Sands, 28, said he had to move from California to Idaho to achieve what he called the “American dream” of owning a home. Another voter, Beyton Owens, 18, said she was worried about the price of gas because she’s constantly driving for her nannying jobs.
But not everyone agrees with the Republican approach. Finn Gaensler, 21, who lives with his parents in Santa Cruz, California, said he is worried about being able to find somewhere he can afford to live while he pursues graduate school in the spring. Rent affordability – or unaffordability – is dictating where it is realistic for him to go to school.
“It’s not just the fact that things are expensive, but I feel like they are getting more expensive more quickly,” he said. “I’m already so, like, stressed about affording things now. Let’s look a month down the track. It’s really bad.”
Gaensler said that while Harris is “not perfect” and inflation and housing aren’t going to be resolved overnight, “there is enough of a chance that I’m willing to vote – which is something that I couldn’t say before.” He said he believes that Harris has the potential to push an agenda that aligns with what he wants for the country.
Abortion
After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, abortion access and reproductive rights became a galvanizing issue for Democrats. Even now, two years later, the decision remains unpopular, with two-thirds of Americans opposing it, according to a poll from Marquette Law School released last month.
Since then, Democrats have forced votes on reproductive health care bills in the US Senate and aggressively highlighted state-level restrictions, tying them back to Trump’s Supreme Court picks and the overturning of Roe. Meantime, Republican candidates in close races across the country who once fervently backed severe abortion restrictions are shifting in how they talk about the issue, shying away from past hard-line positions and, in several cases, softening their stances.
This November, voters in at least 10 states will take to the polls to determine the future of abortion access in their states, following nationwide efforts to secure a wave of ballot measures aimed at restoring or protecting the right to an abortion — and at least one aimed at restricting it.
Following the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe in 2022, Ava Pallotta from Port Chester, New York, felt helpless during finals week of her first year at Harvard University and decided she wanted to turn that feeling into action.
Pallotta, 20, decided at the time to host a rally in support of abortion rights and has since made an effort to engage in civil discourse with the anti-abortion group at her college, push abortion rights visibility and do grassroots voting work on campus.
“It’s very scary to me that I live in a world where I don’t have access to the same reproductive rights that my mother and my grandmother had for the entirety of their adult lives,” she said.
Since Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Harris in July, Pallotta said the energy has changed and she’s seen young people become more excited for the vice president.
“I think there’s so much fear that’s present in the reality of Gen Z that I don’t find fear to be a mobilizing issue, or like how Gen Z is going to get to the ballot box. So it’s nice to not have fear be the pervasive emotion motivating people to vote,“ she said. “I feel like the conversation has changed to focus around hope, and I think that’s a really wonderful thing.”
Katelyn Kalkowski, 24, said she is also planning to vote for Harris because she wants a president who will enshrine abortion rights into law. Kalkowski, who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, said she doesn’t want to have kids herself and “pushing families and babies on people” is never a good thing.
“I think that while the Supreme Court is kind of stacked against us right now, it’s definitely possible to get some form of legislation back in place to protect our rights,” she said.
While protecting reproductive rights is driving many young voters to the polls, for others, keeping restrictions in place is a top issue.
That’s the case for Sebastien Ostertag, a 24 year-old college student in Dearborn, Michigan. He is a member of the Young Pro-Life Democrats of America and wants to see more resources to support communities and mothers so that they don’t feel like abortion is their only option. He said he believes that abortion is a state issue but that the federal government still has a role to play. Like Kalkowski, Ostertag advocates passing legislation – not to enshrine rights but instead to give states resources to create a safety net.
“The reason I am really interested in the pro-life Democratic message is that it’s not like the Republican message in that, ‘You know what, we’re just going to ban abortion and then it’s up to the private sector to take care of women and children who are going to be in bad situations,’” he said.
Ostertag said he wants to relieve the financial burden of having a baby and disagrees with Michigan’s constitutional amendment that passed in 2022 enshrining the right to an abortion in the state up to “fetal viability.
Foreign policy
America’s position on the world stage is also top of mind for young voters.
The Israel-Hamas war has proved to be a key sticking point for progressive and young voters, as well as Arab American and Muslim communities. The past several months have seen protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza at college campuses across the country.
Meanwhile, Russia’s war in Ukraine has stretched past the two-year mark. The US has committed billions of dollars in security assistance for Kyiv since the start of the war as an increasing amount of lawmakers and Americans disagree on what role the US should play in the conflict.
Jacob Telenko, an 18-year-old who lives in Henderson, Nevada, said he wants the US to continue to be involved globally.
“Isolationism is a massive threat to the United States,” he said. “I believe that the Republican Party as it is today needs to understand that removing ourselves from the world stage would be disastrous.”
Telenko said he feels like Biden has been very involved with other countries during his time in office and he thinks Harris is “likely to continue that active posture” if she succeeds him.
For other young voters, the war in Gaza, specifically, is a key issue. Jean Kojali, who is 23 and lives in Cobb County, Georgia, wants the US to stop sending aid to Israel.
“The United States, we pride ourselves on this, like, protector of democracy and human rights, but we are currently aiding and abetting and funding this genocide, which is just … it’s really upsetting,” Kojali said.
“If Vice President Harris doesn’t start to lay up a bit on this hardened US-Israel relationship, I don’t know if there’s a path to the presidency for her,” she added.
Harris has had to navigate the complex dynamics of the Israel-Hamas war on both the diplomatic level and a political one as the head of the Democratic ticket. Her positions have not been at odds with Biden’s, but she has advocated a more empathetic approach to the Palestinians and in public has sometimes struck a more forceful tone than the president when discussing the situation in Gaza.
“I think that is really important to younger voters that she speaks on Palestinian suffering and kind of works towards the ceasefire and, you know, just hears us,” said Kalkowski, the 24-year-old from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who added that Harris needs to further contrast herself with Biden over the war in Gaza.
Immigration
Immigration and the southern border have also become central issues in the 2024 election, especially for voters in border states.
On the campaign trail, Trump has attacked Harris on the issue and touted his hard-line immigration policies. Harris’ campaign manager, meantime, indicated in July that a crackdown on asylum claims that was put in place by the White House earlier this year would continue if Harris succeeds Biden.
A bipartisan bill that included some of the toughest border security measures in recent memory failed twice in the Senate this year. The legislation would have sped up the asylum process and expanded the president’s ability to limit migrant crossings at the US-Mexico border. Trump came out against the deal before it was introduced, dooming the initial vote.
Noe Nunez, 25, from Zebulon, North Carolina, said that immigration is one of his top issues because he believes the laws are flawed and don’t keep up with the times.
“I am a first-generation American, so I grew up with the immigrant community,” said Nunez, whose family is Mexican American. “So it’s kind of like a double-edged sword. I’m looking towards my future, but at the same time, I know the struggles that come with trying to find your place in this country.”
Nunez said there were flaws in the migrant vetting process, saying “it’s just letting random people come in that have not been vetted correctly, which creates crime. There’s a lot of things that they are getting, benefits or demand benefits that regular Americans are not getting, which is one of the things that I don’t find that it’s right.”
Similarly, Jed Lyons, 25, who lives in Gilbert, Arizona, just outside Phoenix, said he wants to see the border measures that were in place under the Trump administration be reinstated, including finishing the border wall and carrying out deportations. He said he felt like the physical barrier made a noticeable impact on his border state.
Joseph Yang, 21, another first-generation American, also wants to see changes that go further than just security on the border itself. The son of South Korean immigrants, Yang said it was disheartening for him and his parents to see so many people entering the country illegally after they went through numerous steps to navigate the legal process.
Yang, who lives in Chandler, Arizona, and is involved in the state’s Young Republican organization, said the volume of people crossing illegally does make him concerned about safety. But still, he acknowledged that there is “no real solution that either party has offered.” He said he thinks there needs to be “bipartisan reform” of the legal immigration system “that is at a deeper level“ to streamline the process.
“That’s what the American Dream is. You can come here with literally nothing, and you can work hard, and you can attain the American Dream for your family,” he said. Pointing to his own family, Yang said he believes that his parents achieved this very version of the American Dream with his father recently retiring after about 30 years of service at the United States Postal Service.
Regardless of what issues are galvanizing young voters to head to the polls, many say they think their turnout in November will surprise some people.
“I think that we’re going to show up in ways people are not expecting,” Gaensler, the 21-year-old from Santa Cruz, California, said of young Americans. “We’re going to shift things, and people aren’t ready.”
CNN’s Kate Sullivan and Dana Elobaid contributed to this report.
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