Democrats can win over young Trump voters. Here's how.

Washington Post

01-05-2025

Jay Inslee, a Democrat, was governor of Washington from 2013 to 2025.
It is a rare moment when a single action can address two national crises. Now is such a moment, as we watch both the collapse of young Americans' support for constitutional and law-abiding leadership and an attack on our nation's efforts to fight climate change.
Just 100 days into President Donald Trump's administration, it is painful to see the progress our nation has made against climate change being threatened by his assault on the protection of clean air and water. To combat this, we must turn around the dynamic that caused this crisis in the first place: the dramatic slide in young people's support for the Democratic candidate for president in 2024.
The percentage of young voters who supported the Democrat fell by more than 20 points from 2020 to 2024, a massive hemorrhaging that Democrats must stanch. Fortunately, we have a solution that speaks to both the economic and lifestyle desires of our youth and clearly separates our party from the anti-science GOP.
Democrats must embrace the virtues and benefits of clean energy and the need to defeat climate change. We need to be optimistic about our ability to build a brighter future for those with decades of life ahead of them — both because the opposition denies the threat on our doorstep and because we can create jobs while offering young Americans a better living through clean technology and the chance to invent the future.
We can exercise that optimism because, although young people's declining support represents a remarkable swing that should alarm Democrats, it does not show an immutable partisan realignment. Gen Z did not embrace the GOP or Trump's far-right policies wholesale. Instead, the data paints a picture of an extremely fluid and disaffected generation — a must-win voting bloc enamored of neither party and desperate to upend a failed status quo.
In post-election polls, young Trump voters overwhelmingly cited the economy as their top concern and were far more progressive than Trump's base on abortion, immigration and a range of other hot-button issues. In fact, nearly half of 18-to-29-year-old Trump voters said the government should be doing more to solve our problems, and 6 in 10 said they were concerned about the effects of climate change in their community.
Young voters have expressed similar frustration in focus groups about the overlapping crises they confront: a spiraling cost-of-living crisis; an existential climate crisis; and political dysfunction that precludes us from tackling the first two.
As Democrats consider how to present a compelling vision to the next generation, we should focus on the issue that simultaneously represents the greatest threat to them and the clearest delineation between the two parties. There are some Republicans, such as former senator Bill Frist (Tennessee) and former congressman Bob Inglis (South Carolina), who are farsighted on climate change, but unfortunately Trump's base still refuses to help find solutions. Until that changes, young voters should know that the Democratic Party is the only game in town.
And we have the record to prove it.
In 2021, as governor of Washington, I signed into law a landmark 'cap-and-invest' program requiring our largest polluters to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and purchase carbon allowances from the state. The billions of dollars in revenue raised now finance clean energy and climate investments statewide — from electrifying ferries and school buses to providing young people with free access to transit and working families with credits toward their electric bills — that are boosting economic opportunity.
The next year, a Democratic Congress made historic investments in clean energy that spurred an American manufacturing renaissance, creating more than 400,000 well-paying jobs while curbing costs and pollution. Trump is on a warpath to destroy those gains, but he won't succeed if we all stand up to reject his cynicism.
I know this is possible because I've lived it. Special interests tried to kill my climate law shortly after it took force, spending millions to get a repeal initiative on the 2024 ballot and bombard voters with dishonest ads.
But the people spoke unequivocally, defeating the repeal initiative by a whopping 24 points. Moreover, Washington saw the smallest rightward shift of any state in 2024, with Democrats up and down the ballot notching victories even as the party suffered steep setbacks in other blue states.
None of this means that embracing clean energy is a panacea or that the tasks before us are easy. But we must inspire young people to believe once again in what is possible — to see a future where upward mobility is accessible, climate action is achievable, and their leaders are bold champions for them.