Kamala Harris’ ‘Brat’ Campaign Appears To Be Paying Off

Kamala Harris’ “Brat summer” inspired campaign seems to be paying off, as polls show a strong surge of support from Generation Z voters.

A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Thursday showed Harris is doing 24 percentage points better than Biden among 18-34 year olds, and voters in the age group moved from supporting Trump by 11 points in a June 30 poll, to supporting Harris by 13 points in the latest poll. The Vice President picked up 49 percent of the vote to Trump’s 36 percent.

The poll also showed Harris had improved on Biden’s standing among Hispanic voters by 16 points, among Black voters by 17 points, and 23 points among people with annual income below $20,000. The poll was conducted among 1,000 likely voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Newsweek has contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment via email.

The USA Today/Suffolk University poll is not the only survey which shows a significant lead for Harris among Generation Z voters, which includes 18-27 year olds. The latest Big Village poll, conducted between August 23 and 28, also showed Harris with a 13 point lead over Trump. A Big Village poll conducted between June 28 and 30 showed Trump with a 21 point lead over Biden among 18-26 year olds.

However, other polls show that the Democrats’ lead among young people has largely stayed the same, with the latest Economist/YouGov poll, conducted between August 25 and 27, showing the Vice President with a 19 point lead among the youngest voters, while a survey by the same pollster in June showed Biden with an 18 point lead.

Nonetheless, experts have attributed Harris’ lead among Generation Z voters to her adoption of the “Brat summer” viral trend in campaign material.

In the hours after Biden dropped out in July, dozens of endorsements flooded in for Harris, including an unlikely one from British popstar, Charli XCX, who has a huge following among Gen Z.

“Kamala IS brat,” she wrote on X, in reference to her album titled Brat released in June.

Kamala HQ, the official campaign account for Harris, later set its cover photo in the style of the Brat album.

“With the ‘Brat Summer’ of Kamala Harris emojis winding down, young people, persons of color, and low-income households have swung dramatically toward the vice president,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. “These same demographics were emphasized and woven together by numerous speakers at the convention.”

Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of The Politics of Generation Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape our Democracy, agreed, telling Newsweek: “The large swing of young voters to the Harris campaign since Biden left the race has been nothing short of remarkable.

“Most of the movement has come from younger Americans who were probably likely to stay home in November if the options were Biden or Trump.

“Instead, Harris’ ascent to the Democratic nomination has generated a lot more organic enthusiasm among those voters, particularly young women and young voters of color, who have been reliable Democratic voters.

“The Harris campaign has also been adept at tapping into the meme culture that inhabits Gen Z’s world, from embracing the idea that Kamala Harris is ‘Brat’ and a true ‘femininomenon.'”

Thomas Gift, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the center on US Politics at UCL, also drew on Harris’ adoption of online trends as a reason for her success among young voters.

“Harris has been strikingly effective at using ‘micro-influencers’ to erase Trump’s prior advantage on social media platforms like TikTok. That’s helped her court and energize young voters who no longer get their news from legacy media outlets. Through viral memes and videos, Harris has been able to remake her image and present her campaign as projecting good ‘vibes,'” he told Newsweek.

Young voters have typically favored the Democrats in U.S. presidential elections, with no Republican winning young voters since George H.W. Bush’s landslide victory in 1988.

However, Biden had begun to buck a decade old trend this year when some polls showed Trump leading him among Generation Z voters, while others showed his approval rating dropping among that age group.

Biden’s approval rating among the young demographic declined owing in part to his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which has yielded an 81 percent disapproval rating among voters younger than 35, according to CNN.

However, polls are now showing that Harris has put the Democrats back on track with young voters.

“Younger voters were clearly looking for an alternative this election cycle, and the Harris-Walz tickets represents that alternative,” Deckman told Newsweek.

Voting behavior surveys have shown that 18-to-30-year-olds are typically the least engaged age group at elections, with just 13 percent of validated voters in 2016 being under 30, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Harris campaign told NPR this week that it plans to invest in new digital ads on campus and social media, double its youth organizing staff around the country, and launch a college campus tour in battleground states in order to appeal to young voters.

The initiatives will target young voters on 150 campuses across 11 states: Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota and Nebraska.