NextGen Climate’s Weekly Recap: Celebrities Roll Out the Red Carpet for Early Voting

This week, while Donald Trump once again focused on his own financial well-being by holding a ribbon cutting event at a hotel in Washington DC, Hillary Clinton campaigned on climate change in North Carolina and Bernie Sanders urged voters to support Clinton because of her plan to address climate change. Young voters are hearing that call—a flurry of polls showed that millennial voters overwhelmingly reject the Republican nominee and are coming together to support Hillary Clinton. The Harvard Institute of Politics conducted a poll of 18-29 year olds and found that Clinton leads Trump by 28 points in a four-way match up—equally important, the survey found that “young voter turnout is closely tracking 2012 levels.”

As early voting continues in key battleground states, it is clear that young voters will be a critical constituency in the presidential election. SurveyMonkey unveiled an interactive map illustrating what would happen if only millennials voted. In that hypothetical scenario, Clinton would win with a near sweep of the Electoral College, winning over 500 electoral votes. And another poll from GenForward finds that Clinton now has the same level of support among millennials as President Obama did in 2012—or as the Washington Post’s The Fix puts it: “Clinton’s millennial surge has arrived.”

Young voters appear to be taking advantage of the opportunity to vote early and reject Trump’s hate-filled agenda. NextGen Climate has already seen significant turnout on college campuses in battleground states like Iowa and Nevada. Meanwhile, try as they might, Republican Senate candidates cannot separate themselves from their nominee’s increasingly flailing campaign. Joe Heck in Nevada said that voters have no right to know who he is voting for, and in Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey refuses to tell voters if he will vote for Trump—just two more craven political maneuvers in an attempt to win election. In North Carolina, Richard Burr even admitted that “there’s not a separation” between him and Trump. Despite a terrible few weeks for their nominee, the GOP rank-and-file still somehow find a way to stand behind their nominee’s toxic agenda.

With less than two weeks until Election Day, it is more important than ever to make sure young voices are heard in this election. That’s why NextGen Climate is using innovative tactics—like creative digital content, get out the vote mail and puppies at the polls—to engage and turnout young voters to elect climate champions to the White House and U.S. Senate.