Young Women: The Opportunity for ‘Secret Surge’ Voters to Power the Harris Campaign

By Ashley Aylward

Over the past two years, young women have set new records at box offices, album charts and concert arenas. Now, new evidence shows that the polling place might be next.

Starting last summer, America has witnessed young women become a leading economic and cultural force. Taylor Swift, Beyonce and the Barbie movie all broke records. Barbie was the highest grossing movie of 2023 with $1.4 billion in revenue, Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour grossed $579 million, and Swift’s Eras Tour will wrap up this year as the highest-grossing tour of all time The stops on those tours making even more notable impacts on local economies – Taylor Swift’s tour stop in Arizona brought in even more revenue than the Superbowl did at the very same stadium that year. 

Women are coming together around their shared experiences of womanhood, lifting each other up and demonstrating their massive power in the marketplace.  The underlying theme that seems to ignite such strong reactions out of the fandoms of  Barbie, Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Charli XCX have been  how they all validate  and uplift the shared burdens of being a woman in society today — and the uniting power of shared identity.

Young women are having a moment. And it’s not just in pop culture.

New research shows there could be a “secret surge” of these young women at the ballot box in 2024. While much of the political conversation in the past several months has focused on other demographics, young women who fall into the category of “sporadic” voters – those who voted in 50% or less of the last 6 federal elections they were eligible for – have quietly emerged as a potent force motivated to vote this November. If Vice President Kamala Harris wins in November, it will likely be due to record-breaking turnout from young women who support her who don’t typically turn out to vote. This “secret surge” of young women would not be accounted for in the nearly tied presidential horse race polling numbers, since they wouldn’t qualify as a likely voter – the survey universe that is typically used for horserace polling.

This new research, which I conducted at HIT Strategies, along with Supermajority, JG Insights, and Lake Research Partners, reveals that there has been a massive vibe shift among young sporadic voting female voters. It could make the difference for Harris’ campaign if they are able to engage and turnout these voters. We surveyed more than 1,100 “sporadically voting” young women: women under 35 who had voted less than half of the time in federal elections, a key audience that is not accounted for in public horserace polling using likely voter samples. We found that, since May, the number of young sporadic voting women who reported feeling positively about America’s future increased by 17% and the number reporting feeling positively about their own future increased by 20% to 86%. Among Black and Latina women, that number is even higher: Positivity towards the future of the country has doubled among young Black and Latina women since May. Attitudinal shifts of this amount in such a short amount of time are relatively groundbreaking in the research community.

And, compared to last year, the number of “sporadically voting” young women who see their vote as powerful has increased substantially – including increases of more than 20% among Asian-American and Pacific Islander women and Latina women. We use the measurement of “power your vote has to make change” to more accurately measure motivation to vote.

The enthusiasm behind Vice President Harris’ campaign has been a major contributing factor to this significant vibe shift. Harris was the change young women needed to engage in the political arena. She represents the traits young women were specifically asking for in a candidate—a diverse and young leader who meets them where they are and who can beat Donald Trump. One young Black woman in our focus group this August told us: “​​I didn’t know if I was going to vote until Kamala came around… I’m listening to what she wants to do, to things that she plans on [doing] as she’s campaigning. So that’s what’s actually provoking me to actually want to vote. I’m like, ‘Oh, yes, I see a familiar face. I think she will be able to do something for us.’ So that’s my reason.”

Harris has built off of the recently reignited cultural phenomena empowering young women over the last two years to ensure they become a tremendous force for change as voters. From the start of her campaign, Harris tapped into the cultural forces driving women out in 2024 to bring those who are less engaged into the political sphere, from leaning into Charli XCX dubbing her “Brat”, deploying Taylor Swift themed snapchat filters encouraging young women to be fearless, and even joining Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast. Harris has plugged into the modern ecosystem in a way other candidates have not previously done and given young women a candidate who they feel reflected by and connected to, and it’s working.

Among these sporadically voting young women, Harris now holds a 16% lead – with further ability to grow by driving her message home down the stretch.

In 2022, we saw young women underrepresented in the polls, turning a projected red wave into a Democratic win. Exit polls from 2022 showed that along with a large shift in young voters voting for Democrats, 47% of young female voters were angry at the Dobbs decision, and 83% of those young female voters came out to cast a ballot for a Democratic candidate. As Taylor Swift sang, “No one likes a mad woman; you made her like that.”

Wrapping up the 2024 cycle, young women continue to be infuriated  about the attacks on their rights and are even more motivated by a candidate at the top of the ticket that resembles themselves and their values . They are fired up to demonstrate the power of their vote at the ballot box, just like they already have demonstrated their power at the box office.

This secret surge of young women has the power to decide this election, and lift Kamala Harris from Brat Summer to the White House.

Ashley Aylward is a Research Manager at HIT Strategies, a Washington DC-based public opinion research firm. Her work has specifically focused on research surrounding criminal justice reform, reproductive justice, women in politics and young voters.