Get In Loser, We're Going Voting: How Young Women Are Shifting Left

Young women’s swing to the left isn’t new. But it is getting increasingly dramatic.

When Taylor Swift came out to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris last month, it was the Instagram post heard ’round the world (or at least ’round the TikTok FYP algorithm).

“I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them,” Swift wrote immediately following the first, and only, debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump. She signed her message “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady” — a knock at Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, who has used the term to demean women without children.

With her simultaneous endorsement of the Democrat and swipe at the Republican, Swift, at 34 arguably the most famous millennial woman in U.S. pop culture, also made herself the avatar of an ongoing shift in politics among her demographic of young women: For the past few decades, they have been tilting decidedly left.

“It’s popping out in the polling because it’s more dramatic this year than it has been in other years,” said Elaine Kamarck, director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution.

The Harris campaign has been assiduously courting women, and particularly young women. Harris regularly makes abortion rights a talking point in interviews and stump speeches, has embraced the meme-ification of her campaign (including Charli XCX enthusiasm and Swift-themed get-out-the-vote campaigns), and recently went on the popular podcast “Call Her Daddy,” which began life as a relationship and advice podcast and whose audience is now over two-thirds female and over 90% younger than 45.