KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Brown-and-gold striped overalls on, two Coors Light cans balanced in his right hand, Cass Staniec laid out why he will be voting for Democrats in a few weeks.
He’s spent countless hours and dollars on hospital visits, he said, to treat a string of concussions the past few years. (“It shows!” a buddy of his shouted from behind.)
It’s why the 21-year-old Staniec, a junior at Western Michigan University, said he is excited to cast his ballot for Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan and a former public health official who has made Medicare-for-all a cornerstone of his campaign.
Across the tailgate at WMU’s homecoming weekend, 20-year-old Mak Kreps, 20, seemed less enthusiastic as he thought through his options outside a fraternity tent.
Kreps voted for Donald Trump two years ago, he said, but is not especially amped about the GOP’s nominees now — even if he is still planning to vote for El-Sayed’s opponent, Republican Mike Rogers, a former congressman.
“It’s all about the open markets,” Kreps said. “That’s the economic system I agree with, and he is pretty consistent with that opinion.”
Their split opinions during a recent tailgate party — as classmates congregated around beer pong tables and blow-up horses to cheer on the school’s Broncos football team — offer hints on the continuing fight to win over their generation ahead of next month’s midterm elections.
Trump in 2024 took in 47 percent of voters under 30, his party’s best showing with that demographic in decades. He did even better with male Gen Z voters, courting them at UFC fights and bitcoin conferences to win their support by a 14-point margin.
But two years later, Democrats are ahead by 28 points among Gen Z, according to a Pew Research Center poll released this month. That’s compared with an eight-point Democratic lead across all groups.
Conservative podcasters and influencers who championed the president and have large followings among young people, like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson, are now criticizing Trump over his ramped-up deportation campaign and his approach to conflict overseas.
The war in Iran has proved especially unpopular with young people, many of whom say they voted for Trump over his “America First” promise to avoid “forever wars” in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Tyler LaFaive, 24, said he’s been feeling the price of gas when he drives his Subaru Forester around the state. LaFaive lives about four hours north in Petoskey but came back to WMU, where he had studied education, for homecoming weekend.
He voted for Trump in 2016, just months after becoming eligible to cast a ballot, but hasn’t voted since. He doesn’t plan on voting this year, either.
“Both sides, I’m not a fan,” he said. His parents support Trump and encouraged him to do so as well, LaFaive said, but he’s had mixed feelings about the president and doesn’t feel like there is a middle ground between the major parties.
“Whether you support [Trump] or not, it does feel like you’re branded as either a racist or as too liberal and extreme,” he said.
WMU, a campus of about 17,000 students known for its strong aviation program, leans toward Democrats, though not as sharply as Michigan’s bigger public universities farther to the east.
The party’s college chapter here is more active than the much smaller College Republicans group. Most conservatives tend to flock to Christian student groups or the school’s Turning Point USA chapter.
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris won the two Kalamazoo precincts covering the school’s campus by double-digit margins in 2024, though most students said they are registered to vote in their hometowns elsewhere.
Between classes, jobs and the occasional Saturday off like this one, many at WMU across the ideological spectrum had little time to pay attention to politics.
“The only thing I care about is making those five-minute ads go away,” said Justin Oviatt, a senior from Rochester Hills studying aviation management.
But support for El-Sayed, like other Democratic candidates this year, seems to be surging among young people. Several young voters at the tailgate, including Oviatt, said they were tapped into his ads but hadn’t heard or seen anything from Rogers.
El-Sayed also gained attention on campus when he answered questions at a lecture-room town hall here last month. One student, 19-year-old Valentino Deneau, described himself as “pro-life” and said he “tends to vote more conservatively” before asking El-Sayed why he should vote for him.
In a seven-minute response, El-Sayed led the crowd in a round of applause for Deneau, whom he thanked for showing up, and then framed universal health care as the policy that would do the most to support life. A video clip of the exchange went viral.
Deneau, a communications major who grew up in the nearby town of Portage, said in an interview that El-Sayed gave “the best answer he could have come up with.”
Yet he’s still undecided in the Senate race. In a newly competitive House race for his area’s congressional district, he said he’s planning to vote for Rep. Bill Huizenga (R) over Sean McCann, a Democratic state senator from Kalamazoo and a WMU graduate.
Deneau said he doesn’t like that Rogers has taken so much money from political action committees, but abortion is his top issue. El Sayed’s response “still desecrated the unborn,” Deneau said.
Trump “uses Christianity as a shield,” he said, adding that he voted for libertarian candidate Chase Oliver over Trump in the 2024 presidential election, just after his 18th birthday.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Politics are a mess right now.”
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