Young Black Voters in Georgia Could Decide the 2024 Elections

(Originally posted on Teen Vogue on March 12, 2024)

Looking ahead to the 2024 election, advocacy leaders in Georgia have the same concerns on their minds: They want to protect democracy. They want to make things better in the world. They’re also deeply worried about a fact that has been permeating the news cycle for a while now: Young voters and Black voters are just not interested in this year’s presidential election.

But these demographics are key to securing electoral victories in the state. In 2020, Joe Biden flipped Georgia with the help of Black voters and young voters who came out in droves. It was the highest turnout for both groups recorded in Georgia history.

Still, the state’s election was decided by a very narrow margin: just 0.51%, or only 12,670 votes. With numbers this low, Biden can’t afford to lose the support of young people or Black voters who simply decide not to show up — or to vote for a different candidate.

In a January Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll, 13% of voters said they would either not vote or would back another candidate rather than the two presumptive nominees. Concerns have arisen about Biden's 81 years of age and Donald Trump's 91 criminal charges. The Journal-Constitution poll also showed dissatisfaction with both candidates' performance as president. According to the poll, Trump is currently leading Biden in the state by 8 points.

Aunna Dennis, executive director at Common Cause, a voting rights advocacy group, told Teen Vogue that young Black voters, specifically, are apathetic due to unfulfilled campaign promises. They want more action on issues including racial justice, student debt relief, and access to good jobs and affordable housing.

“They’re not experiencing the same prosperity that is being broadcast by the media,” Tanya Washington, a law professor at Georgia State University College of Law, tells Teen Vogue.

Despite numerous reports of the economy’s general health under “Bidenomics,” young Black voters still feel the ramifications of high inflation, says Washington. With an increasingly inaccessible housing market and layoffs affecting Big Tech and journalism, the pinch is real for young Black voters.

The messaging focus on the economy hasn’t satisfied Gerald Griggs, president of the Georgia NAACP. In his view, young Black voters didn’t slide Biden into that plush White House chair for just economic policy. It went bigger than that. “Georgia sent him to Washington because there was a young jogger [named Ahmaud Arbery] who was killed by racist white vigilantes who had been inflamed by the previous president,” Griggs told Teen Vogue.

Griggs says that Biden and his administration have seemed somewhat uninterested in pursuing some of the racial justice initiatives that were demanded after 2020. (Biden notably called to “fund the police” during his 2022 State of the Union address). Both Dennis and Griggs say that the perceived lack of action on these issues has caused the administration to slowly fall out of favor with young Black voters.

On some issues like student debt relief, Biden may simply have a perception issue. Gbemende Johnson, an associate political science professor at the University of Georgia, notes that Biden did launch a sweeping effort to cancel student loans, but the proposal was struck down by the Supreme Court.

Johnson encourages young voters dissatisfied with the current White House to determine if the president has the power to fix a given problem and if the administration has made tangible efforts to fix it. Ultimately, she says, it’s up to Biden to communicate his work on these issues to voters.

Facing this matrix of overlapping concerns, advocacy leaders across Georgia are doing their best to try to address voter apathy. When they’re going out into communities to talk to people, they’re focusing less on the candidates and more on issues.

The Georgia NAACP, for example, is taking voters on a trip down memory lane. “We remind them of what 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 looked like in Georgia,” Griggs says, again citing the murder of Arbery and the local government’s allegedly botched handling of the case.

Other organizations are trying to keep the focus on local issues and making sure voters have the info they need. The Georgia chapter of the Working Families Party (WFP), a grassroots organization that helped get Biden elected in 2020, is rolling out a program that trains people to go into communities to educate residents on the election and where to get information.

Britney Whaley, southeast regional director at WFP, says they’ve also been organizing movements that speak to their issues, such as getting the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, dubbed “Cop City” by activists, on a referendum ballot. Organizers have used social media to connect with people in their age group to educate and mobilize them to take action locally. Kelsea Bond from Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America says that young progressives are tired of the two-party system and are looking to have an impact on their local community. “Individuals feel like they have more of an ability to impact the outcome of local races,” says Bond.

Some young people been squaring off to run for public office or advocating at the State Capitol with organizations such as the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition. The races that don’t get as much attention, like for district attorney or a seat on the school board, are ones that young Black voters are tuning in to, says Whaley.

Black youth may not be feeling rosy about Trump or Biden, but they are feeling empowered to get involved in local politics. And even if that doesn’t mean holding official office, they’re throwing their hats in. And advocacy leaders have taken notice of all those hats and taken quite a liking to them.

“So I’m super inspired by them every day because I’m like, 'Yes, that’s what we need to be doing,’” says Dennis of Common Cause.