From Orlando Sentinel:
Can Angie Nixon turn out enough young voters to win a U.S. Senate seat?
Young voters are fired up for U.S. Senate candidate Angie Nixon — but will enough of them show up in November to propel the Democrat to victory in blood-red Florida?
Nixon, the progressive firebrand Florida House member challenging Republican U.S. Senator Ashley Moody, is barnstorming universities across the state in an effort to reach those voters, including visits to the University of Florida last weekend and the University of Central Florida on Tuesday.
Even before Nixon arrived at UCF, the event room at the school’s student union was abuzz, with the chatter of the attendees audible from the outside hallway though the doors were closed. Once she took the stage, the energetic crowd loudly cheered when she mentioned policies like Medicare for All, a $25 minimum wage and a moratorium on data centers.
The crowd jeered just as loudly when Nixon mentioned “lying, cheating, scamming Ashley Moody.” One audience member yelled out “She’s a thief,” to which Nixon agreed.
If you’ll steal from sick kids, you’ll do anything … she’s going to steal from you,” Nixon said, referencing the Hope Florida scandal in which then-Attorney General Moody agreed to divert $10 million from a Medicaid settlement into Republican political activities.
Moody was later tapped to the Senate seat by Gov. Ron DeSantis early last year to succeed Marco Rubio, who left to become President Donald Trump’s secretary of state.
“She was appointed, that was her reward,” Nixon said. “She was appointed to this Senate seat, unelected … Let’s fire her.”
Polls have shown a closer race than expected after Nixon’s upset win in the August Democratic primary. She was within 4 percentage points of Moody in a University of North Florida survey this month, largely spurred by her huge margins of support among younger voters. Nixon led Moody by 68% to 25% among polled voters age 18 to 24 and by 59% to 32% among voters age 25 to 34.
But large margins for Moody among voters 55 and older — a much more reliable voting bloc — helped keep her lead over Nixon.
Nixon’s young supporters at the UCF event said they like her because of her stances on healthcare, wealth inequality, climate change and artificial intelligence, along with the fact she is a fighter, a quality they believe moderate Democrats haven’t shown.
Activating the youth vote has been a hope and a mirage for Democrats in Florida for years, as predictions of increased turnout failed to materialize. “Now at this historic crossroads, youth voters will turn out en masse for Kamala Harris,” Florida Future Leaders chair Jayden D’Onofrio said in 2024.
But of the more than 40 million members of Gen Z eligible to vote nationwide in the 2024 election, 21 million of them did not, according to data from Tufts University. This year, there are almost 50 million members of Gen Z eligible.
Some who attended the UCF event worried about whether Nixon can actually motivate those young non-voters.
“It’s not anything against her, there’s just a trend of young people not generally voting. And I think it’s hard for Angie Nixon herself to move the needle,” said Sebastian Omedas, a 23-year-old mechanical engineering student. “I do see a lot of people in Gen Z being more excited about … populist approaches. I think she has a better shot than other politicians, but I would be kind of skeptical.”
Zachary Thomas, a 19-year-old economics student who attended the event, was more optimistic that Nixon’s the one to finally spur his peers to the polls.
“I really think she’s really bringing something new,” he said, comparing her to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. “I don’t know if she’s gotten the Mamdani effect where it’s…almost a political revolution. She just needs to turn [the] politically revolutionary dial just enough. And I think she could sneak it out.”
A recent New York Times poll shows 70% of young voters aged 18 to 29 identified as Democrats or leaned that way — 15 points higher than in the Times’ last poll before the 2024 election and comparable to the numbers at the time of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential win.
Young voters now favor the Democratic candidate for Congress in their district by 44 percentage points, compared with a 10-point margin two years ago, and just 16 percent approve of President Trump’s job performance, at least 11 points lower than any other age group, the Times poll found.
Speaking to reporters before the UCF event, Nixon spoke about her youth turnout strategy.
“I have a lot of young people out here … getting college campuses activated. They’re also going to clubs, they’re going to meet young people where they are,” she said. “We’re going to leave no stone unturned.”
To aid Nixon and other Democrats, People Power for Florida, a youth voter group founded by State Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, is organizing three early voting events for young people before the Nov. 3 election, including at UCF, Florida State University and the University of South Florida.
Gregory Koger, a political science professor at the University of Miami, stressed the importance of Nixon winning the younger demographic, which he said usually correlates with the outcome of an election.
“In 2008, Barack Obama got two-thirds of the of young voters. And that was a big part of the reason that he won the election easily,” Koger said. “In 2024, Donald Trump did better than in previous cycles among young voters and it was his his best vote total of the three campaigns.”
Esteban Suarez, a 23-year-old political science student who attended the UCF event, said those younger voters won’t support Republicans this time around.
“They feel betrayed,” he said, adding that most people his age who voted for Trump did it because of Trump’s promises to lower prices. “They’re looking at the situation now and reality is not matching the expectations.”
D’Onofrio, who since his founding of Florida Future Leaders has made runs for state House and state Democratic party leadership, said the same factors that led young people to vote for the GOP in 2024 — an older president and high prices — are now leading them to vote for Democrats.
“I think young voters are always rebellious. They are always going to question the the leadership that we have of our president, whether they’re Democrat or Republican,” he said. “I’ve never seen Democrats have such a large opportunity for young voters. [But] they have to exploit it. They have to make sure all of these voters turn out.”
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