Anderson Clayton, the 26-year-old chair of North Carolina’s Democratic party, is a rising star in centre-left politics and a key link between Joe Biden and the young voters he needs to win re-election in November. She fears Biden is not getting enough credit on climate change with Generation Z voters in the southern battleground state.
“I know that for a lot of young people right now, they’re saying he hasn’t done enough,” said Clayton. “And I’m like, well, do you know what other presidents have done? I mean, genuinely, do you know what other people’s records have looked like?”
Since entering office in 2021, Biden has rejoined the Paris climate pact, enacted sweeping clean energy legislation with the Inflation Reduction Act and proposed new rules to crack down pollution. US emissions fell last year.
Republican candidate Donald Trump, meanwhile, describes climate change as a hoax. His allies say he would gut the IRA and reverse Biden’s anti-pollution measures.
But young Americans — who provided a troop of on-the-ground activists for Biden in 2020 and proved a crucial part of the Democratic party’s winning coalition — are not rushing to support the president’s re-election bid, and time is running out.
“For Democrats to be successful this fall, we’re going to have [to have] young voters in North Carolina and around the country turn out, and turn out in high rates,” said Morgan Jackson, a longtime Democrat strategist based in Raleigh. “That demographic cares about climate.”
It is part of a broader worry that Biden is struggling to galvanise his political base — including progressive and non-white voters — that will be crucial to defeating Trump.
Stevie O’Hanlon, communications director of the progressive climate group Sunrise, said many voters were “dispirited” by Biden’s climate record and at risk of staying home rather than voting in November.
O’Hanlon cited the green light given to ConocoPhillips’s controversial Willow oil project in Alaska and the relentless rise of US oil and gas output, which makes the country the world’s pre-eminent producer.
The frustrations over climate have also collided with other complaints from younger voters about the Biden era, including his support for Israel in the war in Gaza and the surge in living costs during his presidency.
Trump now has stronger support among young people, according to a recent New York Times/Siena poll, with 30 per cent of voters aged 18-29 saying they would back him, compared with 26 per cent for Biden. In October 2020, the same poll showed 58 per cent of young people supporting Biden and 30 per cent for Trump.
Losing young progressives could be fatal to Biden’s electoral chances in places like North Carolina, where about 200,000 students are enrolled at three universities in the “research triangle” cities of Raleigh and Durham and the town of Chapel Hill.
That mass of educated young people has put a state that since 1968 has backed just two Democrats for president in play for this year’s Biden-Trump contest, some Democrats believe. The state already has a Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, now completing his second term.
But while Biden lost the state and its 16 Electoral College votes by just a percentage point to Trump in 2020, the RealClearPolitics polling average now puts him almost five points behind the Republican.
Democratic campaigners have argued that touting new green jobs delivered under Biden and reminding voters of Trump’s pro-fossil fuel agenda will bring young voters around.
Climate Power, a Democrat-aligned campaign group, has selected North Carolina as one of a handful of states where they are working to promote Biden’s green credentials.
Lori Lodes, Climate Power’s executive director, said there was an “education gap” among voters on climate policy, which had become evident in their focus groups.
“People just have very little information,” said Lodes. “So when you present to them, this happened, here’s what he’s done, people are surprised. What we see in our data is that people move significantly . . . 18-29 year olds end up moving 13 points in [Biden’s] direction.”
Biden is also pushing to make his record clearer. He has visited the state three times this year, while vice-president Kamala Harris has visited four times. Trump has been once.
Democrats have so far spent $5.5mn in the state on ads set to run between May and the election in November, as the campaign seeks to spread its message.
In Charlotte recently, Harris touted $20bn in funds the federal government was disbursing for energy efficiency projects, with some of the cash going to North Carolina groups.
That money is destined for the state as a result of the IRA and its hundreds of billions of dollars in green subsidies, Democrats argue. Climate Power said $19bn in investments had already helped create nearly 10,000 jobs in the state.
Among the largest investments is $8bn in an electric vehicle manufacturing facility in Randolph County, one of the most Republican areas of the state, alongside smaller investments in EV charger and battery manufacturing in other counties.
“Over the next few months we’ll make sure this point is being hammered home,” Cooper, the state’s Democratic governor, told the Financial Times. “Whether you are concerned for your planet, your pocketbook or both — clean energy helps.”
Nikolai Kutsch, a rising sophomore and officer at North Carolina State University’s College Democrats chapter, acknowledged the party needed “to do better on messaging”. “When you look at what the Biden administration has done on climate policy, there’s so much to tell people and get excited about.”
But on campuses there is not much excitement brewing among climate voters when they think of November’s election.
“I don’t feel like we’ve done enough for climate change,” said Cameron, a 19-year-old physiology student at NCSU. He warned that he might decide not to vote in November.
“Climate change is real, it’s happening, and if we don’t do something right now then it’s going to end everything,” said Bella, a 20-year-old public policy and economics student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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