On July 21, Kamala HQ made its first post to TikTok after sitting President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. It was a slideshow of two images: the first, a screenshot of pop star Charli XCX’s post declaring that “kamala IS brat,” and the second, the account’s own custom Brat green banner, both set to the blaring track “360” from the iconic album. That post’s caption? “Ready to provide context,” a cheeky reference to Vice President Kamala Harris’ viral coconut tree anecdote. The message was instantly clear: The Harris campaign is speaking Gen Z’s language — but is Gen Z ready to listen?

Leaning into Gen Z’s internet culture is one thing. Actually representing Gen Z as president is another, and young voters are ready to hold Harris to task. On paper, she’s already presented a more exciting candidate than Biden by virtue of her age alone. At 59, Harris is far from a Gen Zer, but she has two decades on Republican nominee Donald Trump — who, despite being 78 years old, frequently made digs at Biden’s age and on-stage blunders before he left the race. Harris has embraced a contemporary approach to campaigning, harnessing the power of social media and entrusting control of her online presence to a generation that grew up with the internet. She seems to be telling America’s youngest voters that though Harris isn’t one of them, she’s ready to take them seriously.

With each new election, more of Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) get access to the voting booth. With the oldest of the demographic now turning 27, there are an estimated 40.8 million Gen Zers eligible to vote this November (8.3 million of whom will be eligible for the first time), not to mention the vital down-ballot races occurring across the country. Those young voters have the power to tip the scales toward Harris, and courting them inherently means courting the queer community: As of 2023, more than one in five Gen Z adults (22.3%) self-identify as LGBTQ+, the largest proportion of any generation. 

INTO spoke with queer Gen Zers across the country to get their candid thoughts on the election, from the Harris-Walz campaign’s meme-rich strategies on social media, to the specter of Donald Trump and Project 2025, to why some Gen Zers are still hesitant to give Harris their votes.

“I finally have hope”: Harris’ fresh start

When Harris took Biden’s place as the Democratic nominee for president, many queer Gen Zers found themselves breathing a sigh of relief.

CJ Ackerman-Garvin, a 19-year-old student at the University of Virginia (UVA) and the trans* advocacy chair for the school’s Queer Student Union, remembers exactly where they were when the news broke: inside chain pizza restaurant Mellow Mushroom. They describe it as a “flashbulb memory,” just as burned into their brain as other landmark political events from their teenage years, like the January 6 insurrection and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

“I was watching Biden and his performance in the debates, and I was like, ‘OK, we’re cooked,’” Ackerman-Garvin tells INTO. “But I’m really impressed how the Democratic Party managed to basically create a candidate out of nowhere.”

Seeing Harris take the reins of the Democratic Party was “really energizing to watch,” they say. “I was like, ‘I finally have hope.’ I’m not saying that she’s going to be better or perfect, and I don’t always agree with her policies, but I don’t want to live in an America where Trump has power again, because I remember the fear that he created.”

Ackerman-Garvin wasn’t the only Gen Zer feeling energized by Harris’ sudden entrance to the race. In the 48 hours after Harris announced she was running, a whopping 38,500 people registered to vote, according to nonpartisan organization Vote.org, with that figure skyrocketing to more than 100,000 by Friday of that week. Overall, Vote.org has registered over 1 million voters in the 2024 election cycle, with a record-breaking 79% under age 35 and 34% of all new registrations for 18-year-olds alone.

Among those registered voters is Alexander Saint Von, a 24-year-old actor, model, and New York City transplant originally from Texas.

“I was actually so happy, just so excited — you have no clue,” Saint Von tells INTO. “We need a woman president, first of all. That’s, like, an insane thing that it hasn’t happened yet. I absolutely love the representation, and especially when it’s a woman of color … I think it’s time that we got a little bit of a younger generation into the office. I know she’s not, like, our young, but she’s younger, and I just feel really hopeful.”

I don’t want to be considered illegal. I don’t want to have my health care taken away from me. I don’t want to be ostracized or even hunted down politically.

– Alexander Saint Von, Gen Z voter

Saint Von says they see the Harris-Walz campaign as more vocal than Biden’s was on issues close to home for the LGBTQ+ community: “As a queer individual, I feel more represented. I feel more seen,” she says. Both Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, have long stood up for queer rights during (and even before) their political careers, with Harris officiating gay weddings in California as early as 2004 and Walz running a high school’s GSA in the ’90s while working as a teacher.

Queer issues are close to home for Saint Von, who cites trans rights, trans access to health care, women’s rights, and access to abortions as their most important issues in this election, especially given their own identity as a nonbinary person of color.

“I don’t want to be considered illegal. I don’t want to have my health care taken away from me. I don’t want to be ostracized or even hunted down politically, because there’s been so many hate crimes,” Saint Von says. (In 2020, the FBI reported that hate crimes had surged by nearly 20% during Trump’s presidency.)

Ackerman-Garvin also sees trans rights, especially gender-affirming care and protective health care, as paramount to this election. In their role on UVA’s Queer Student Union working with the school’s trans community, they witness firsthand how government policies trickle down to directly impact students’ lives.

“I see voting as sort of a duty to protect people who don’t have the same resources that I have access to, because Trump has ideas to change the healthcare system and the welfare state,” Ackerman-Garvin says. “I think that’s really scary because I know people, even at UVA, who rely very heavily on those systems, and his policies and his stances on abortion and gender-affirming health care can be really dangerous and really affect people’s lives.”

Queer Gen Z’s youngest voters feel similarly: Madeline*, an 18-year-old high school senior from Colorado, also told INTO that queer rights are a priority for her this election. As a first-time voter, the chaos of this election cycle is “a little terrifying,” she says.

Madeline works as a youth advisor with Peer Health Exchange, a health education organization for high schoolers, and says reproductive rights are also on her mind in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s overturning: “It’s a conversation around women’s anatomy,” she says. “It is very important to me, even living in a blue state.”

“It’s not just a meme”: Winning Gen Z on social media

The Harris-Walz campaign’s connection with queer voters is no coincidence. It’s due in large part to Sam Alleman, the campaign’s national LGBTQ+ engagement director, who knows that speaking to queer folks means keeping Gen Z top of mind.

“To run this program intrinsically means you’re talking to young voters,” Alleman tells INTO. “Most of Gen Z has not voted in a presidential election before. I think that’s a dynamic that we think about a lot in terms of getting them out to vote and engaging them civically. So I think everything this program does is supposed to be speaking to and resonate with our younger voters if I’m really doing my job effectively.”

That sense of speaking to young people manifests primarily as Kamala HQ, the Harris-Walz campaign’s official branding across the internet, which looks different from platform to platform: On TikTok, posts often link the political news of the day to trending memes and audio, accompanied by captions chock-full of Gen Z slang. On X (formerly Twitter), it shares news clips and interviews from both sides of the aisle with minimal commentary, letting Harris’ and Trump’s words and actions speak for themselves. 

@kamalahq

🍊

♬ Please Please Please – Team Sabrina

“I’m not even gonna lie to you: This is one of my favorite campaign runs, just in the sense of Brat,” says Saint Von. “I’m so sorry, Brat was iconic.”

Saint Von is referring, of course, to the synergy between Kamala HQ and Charli XCX’s “Brat Summer,” including the aforementioned post from Charli herself linking Harris to her smash hit summer album, which has become a queer club staple since its release in June.

“I think they’re doing an amazing job of not only incorporating TikTok memes but also of showing the facts,” Saint Von continues. “I feel like it’s really resonating, because it’s not just a meme, it’s not just something funny to look at. She’s actually taking us seriously as voters.”

At 24, Parker Butler serves as Kamala HQ’s director of digital rapid response, alongside a team of Gen Z strategists and content creators.

“I just think it comes naturally,” Butler tells INTO of Kamala HQ’s signature voice. “We’re not forcing anything. This is just how we speak online. It’s the same way we’d speak on any other platform or any other account. It speaks to the fact that the vice president trusts young people to speak to young people, and I think that is a mark of a good leader.”

A meme-based aesthetic is all well and good, but it’s the context (pun intended) that Kamala HQ provides that’s especially valuable to voters. Butler says his team is committed to showing who Harris and Trump are through their own words and actions, including their stances on issues important to Gen Z, like reproductive rights and protections for queer people. From there, Butler says, voters can make their own decisions after “connecting the dots.”

“Our goal is to try to provide the information to them in a way that they feel agency over that information. So rather than sort of preaching a fancy press release sort of thing, it’s more fun and just authentic,” Butler explains. “When we’re talking about Donald Trump, we’re using clips of [him] saying the exact words that we’re referring to. I think that that builds credibility with the message that we’re providing. It’s almost like we’re just showing people the facts and letting people come to their conclusion because, ultimately, we’re very confident in our message.”

For example, Donald Trump said on the national debate stage that he has “nothing to do with Project 2025,” the infamous conservative roadmap for the next Republican presidency that includes dramatic rollbacks on protections for women, LGBTQ+ folks, and people of color. Rather than a direct response to that claim, Kamala HQ simply highlights when Trump praises Project 2025’s authors, including John McEntee and Michigan Republican Party Chair Pete Hoekstra, who Trump called “good people” at a recent rally, and former ICE director Thomas Homan, whom Trump plans to appoint to his cabinet.

“A big goal of our program is to show people how extreme they are through their own words, whether it’s a top Trump supporter talking about taking away the right of gay couples to adopt children, or talking about how Donald Trump consistently praises Supreme Court justices who want to overturn Obergefell,” says Butler. “Showing how extreme they are, it’s not a very difficult task.”

But Kamala HQ isn’t the only force on social media reaching young voters. Other influencers and organizations are making their voices known, including Gen-Z For Change, a political advocacy organization by and for Gen Zers.

Among Gen-Z For Change’s leadership is 23-year-old Tony Vara, the organization’s Latino engagement director and leader of its X El Cambio initiative on social media, which specifically speaks to Gen Z’s Latino community with nearly 80,000 TikTok followers. 

Vara is also an influencer, with more than 537,000 followers on TikTok. Their content is largely comedic but often takes on a political spin, too (their views, of course, being independent of Gen-Z For Change). 

“There are issues that I’m just like, ‘I have to talk about this, especially for my audience,’” Vara tells INTO. That includes topics Vara says are close to Latino citizens’ hearts, like policies on immigration and the economy.

“I don’t know a single Latino in my life that doesn’t have an undocumented family member,” Vara says. “So, like, when we see the way that they’re talked about in the media — by both parties — we’re just like, ‘Dang,’ you know? Obviously, there’s one that’s talking about it worse than the other [but] we’re moving more to the right on immigration as a dual party.”

@itonyvara

ATTENTION GAYS!! rupaul’s drag race isn’t the only race we should be paying attention to🌈 #GenZVotes #GZ4CPartner #GenZforChange @Gen-Z for Change

♬ original sound – tony vara

As a social media native, Vara commends the Harris-Walz campaign’s strategies to reach Gen Z. “As much as I hate to admit it, that marketing team knows what they’re doing. Like, anytime there’s a meme-able moment that happens in the election — which, there’s a lot — they’re right on top of it,” he says. “You can tell that a Gen Z person is running that account.”

Vara has a similar philosophy when addressing their own audience, aiming to simply present the facts and let voters do with them what they will. They’re not necessarily encouraging people to vote for Harris, they say, but to be tuned into politics and make informed decisions. 

“I guess inadvertently, I’d want people to vote for Harris, but I cannot bring myself to ask people of that,” they say. “Instead of that, I emphasize how bad Trump is, and from that, they can make their own informed decisions. I also make videos on how Kamala is bad, obviously, but I’m just like, ‘Trump is really bad for our community and really bad for our families. What you do with that is up to you.’”

“The lesser of two evils”: Voting without endorsing

But not all of queer Gen Z is gung-ho about Harris. One of the demographic’s most prominent celebrities, rising pop princess Chappell Roan, stirred up controversy in September over her refusal to endorse Harris for president.

“Endorsing and voting are completely different,” Roan said in a viral TikTok video, citing Harris’ lack of advocating for Palestinian lives and trans rights as sticking points. “I’m not gonna settle for what the options are that are in front of me, and you are not gonna make me feel bad for that,” she continued. “So yeah, I’m voting for f*cking Kamala, but I’m not settling for what has been offered, because that’s questionable.”

While staunch Democrats derided Roan for her statement, some Gen Zers agreed with her. Harris’ less-than-progressive public stances on issues that include the war in Gaza and an endorsement of fracking are leaving a bad taste in some voters’ mouths — to the point they’re considering not casting a vote at all. (A recent Harvard University study found that only 56% of 18- to 29-year-olds nationwide are “definitely” planning to vote in the election, but that Harris leads over Trump by 31 points among likely voters.)

“Overall, I think [the Harris-Walz campaign] is doing a good job, but I know a lot of people in my age group are still not sold,” says university student Ackerman-Garvin. “There’s a pretty large uncommitted voting population. […] There’s a lot of people who are very focused, especially on the war in Gaza, and they don’t like the way that our government has acted around that and our support for Israel, which — I agree with them.”

“[Roan] is standing ten toes down on Palestine, as she should,” agrees Vara. “She doesn’t have to endorse anyone. I haven’t endorsed Kamala Harris,” they add, though they do plan to vote for Harris in their home state of Virginia, which they see as a necessity given the state’s potential to go red.

Vara also points to Harris’ apparent attempts to appeal to conservative voters, including recently saying she’d appoint a Republican to her cabinet and supporting a bipartisan border security bill that would have hired 1,500 more border agents.

“Y’all sound like Republicans,” Vara says. “If someone tells me ‘I’m not voting for president,’ or they’re voting for someone else, I’m like, ‘You know what? That’s the Democrats’ fault. That’s not my fault. That’s their job to earn your vote — so if they haven’t earned it, that’s your business.’”

This is not 2016 or 2020. Donald Trump is even more extreme and even more dangerous than he was before.

– Parker Butler, Kamala HQ’s director of digital rapid response

Though Harris may be much more moderate than Gen Z would prefer, there’s one simple truth that both her campaign team and her potential voters can’t deny: She’s not Donald Trump. 

“It’s not like we’re going in the right direction by voting for Harris, but it makes it easier to get back on the right track,” says Ackerman-Garvin. “I see this election as a way to prevent the backslide, I guess, and to make sure that we can kind of get back to a more stable place, so that way we can create change in the future.”

“A lot of it is the fact that it is against Trump, I’ll be honest. I am definitely more of a leftist when it comes to politics, but I understand that voting is a different thing with how our system is set up,” concedes Madeline, pointing out that America’s two-party system means Harris and Trump are the only viable candidates in this election. “You kind of have to set aside certain values that you have, which is really awful, especially concerning Palestine and Israel.”

“A lot of young people feel that way, where we’re so tired of this ‘vote for the lesser of two evils’ thing,” Vara adds. “I think there’s a lot of us that aren’t happy with the election coming up, and we know ourselves we’re going to vote for Harris, but we don’t have to promote her.”

They continue that criticisms of Harris don’t equate to endorsement of Trump and that claims about unenthusiastic voters feel “so disingenuous.”

“If we hate Harris for moving a little bit right, what makes you think we don’t hate the person who the alt-right endorses?” Vara asks. “They’re like, ‘Oh, well, you want Trump in office.’ Obviously not. But we’re allowed to be unhappy with our candidates.”

Saint Von says they “completely understand” why some voters remain hesitant to cast their ballots for Harris, but that they still see it as a necessity. “I’m not saying that Kamala is a 100% perfect human being — nobody is. There’s definitely some policies that I’m sure not everybody’s gonna agree with,” she continues. “But at this point, it’s literally life or death with minorities, and I just think: lesser of the two evils. Who is actually going to advocate for your rights and your health, and who is not?”

Harris’ team echoes that sentiment, too: “We hear it often, but it truly is the case this time that this is the most important election of our lifetimes,” stresses Kamala HQ’s Butler. “Project 2025 was not a thing [in previous elections]. This is not 2016 or 2020. Donald Trump is even more extreme and even more dangerous than he was before. And so the stakes really could not be higher, and our goal is just to highlight that and let people see that for themselves.”

Alleman, meanwhile, urges young queer voters to let Harris’ track record speak for itself. “You can trace back through Kamala Harris’ career how she has shown up since the very beginning of the first time she was in elected office for LGBTQ people in 2003,” he says, pointing to Harris fighting the infamous “gay and trans panic defense” and opposing Proposition 8 in California.

Even Alleman’s own role in the campaign is a sign that Harris will fight for queer rights as president, he says: “An LGBTQ+ engagement director on a presidential campaign, just as an example, hasn’t always been a thing. How do we continue to grow that for our community here?”

Meanwhile, there’s much more at stake in this election than the presidency alone. Ballots across America will also include elections at the state and local level, along with initiatives that include a record 11 abortion-related ballot measures (with 10 states considering codifying abortion rights in their constitutions).

“I think that state and local officials can have just as big or a bigger impact on your everyday life as the federal government,” says Ackerman-Garvin. “Reproductive health care and gender-affirming care are both in the hands of the states. So I would say people shouldn’t just focus on the federal side of things. They should also focus on the state and the local side of things: Fill out the whole ballot, not just the top.”

Regardless of who wins the presidency on election day, queer Gen Z will have played a part. Harris may be a symbol of hope, especially when posed against Trump, but it’s important not to take the campaign’s Gen Z appeal for granted. Without the actual votes, Harris’ potential as a president will stay just that: potential.

“The most important thing is for us to go out and vote,” says Saint Von. “She’s been doing such a great press tour, that I don’t want anyone to think, like, OK, it’s done. She won.’ Like, no. We still need to go out there and make it happen.”♦

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*Madeline’s last name has been omitted for privacy.

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