Democrats and Republicans both seek young voters. How will they win them over in 2024?

Democrat Jayden D'Onofrio, 18, is in the political arena to honor his late mother. Republican Brianna Reeves, 27, said that when politics becomes personal is when people get engaged.

Different viewpoints, different sets of motives but for the political parties looking to appeal, engage and mobilize millions of young voters like D'Onofrio and Reeves in Florida there is one goal — win them over.

It's a well-worn refrain uttered by the major parties every penultimate presidential election year: They vow to win over voters under the age of 35 in order to gain control of the halls of government from state capitals to Washington, D.C. But as the voter-rich and dominant Baby Boomer population continues to age, and the country's under-40 population swells, the urgency ahead of 2024 is undeniable.

That sense of now was on display in Florida this month.

More: Donald Trump focuses on young voters at Turning Point Action conference

On July 8, Florida Democrats gathered in Miami-Dade County for their Leadership Blue conference, trying to mobilize efforts to draw Millennials and Gen Zers. A week later, the far-right Turning Point Action summit attracted thousands of them to West Palm Beach.

The efforts in what could be another close election could be decisive.

"If I had to predict right now, I would say probably that young voter turnout will be higher than average for 2024," said Aubrey Jewett, a University of Central Florida political science professor. "I think there'll probably be more interest among younger voters because of some of those issues like abortion."

More: Florida Democrats head to Miami to unify a message for 2024

Young voters' track record in casting ballots on the upswing after years of apathy

In fact, the old axiom that young Americans are more apt to march in a protest than cast a vote in an election is becoming a historical footnote.

According to Tufts University, about 50% of America's youngest registered voters, those between the ages of 18 and 29, cast a ballot in the 2020 election, which was about an 11 percentage point increase from 2016.

In Florida, young voter numbers have increased in presidential election years, too. According to data from the Kaiser family foundation, now known as KFF, about 37% of Florida voters between ages 18 and 24 turned out in 2016 and then 47% in 2020, though the percentage of young voters casting ballots in midterms fell from 2018 to 2022.

But challenges remain. Turnout by voters ages 25 to 34 rose by only two percentage points from 2016 to 2020 and turnout by those ages 35 to 44 increased by just one percentage point from 2016 to 2020.

Kaiser statistics also confirmed that older voters dominated Florida turnout in the November 2020 elections. More than 3 million people over the age of 65 cast a ballot while another 3.3 million between the ages of 45 and 64 also voted. Retired voters, those nearing retirement and those in the age range where they focus on retirement planning, accounted for almost two-thirds of the total number of Floridians who voted in that election.

UCF's Jewett said the question is whether rising interest among younger Floridians, and Americans, in issues that matter to them — those that "strike a chord" — will clash with new election laws that require voters to fill out vote-by-mail forms again. Jewett said vote-by-mail is often used by younger voters, particularly college students, who tend to be more transient in this stage of their life, so the change could cause young voter turnout to drop.

Yet 2024 is a presidential election year, and Florida tends to have a lot more presidential ads and campaign visits because of its electoral votes, Jewett said. All told, he said, it's hard to predict how this emerging voting bloc will turn out in 2024.

More: This Palm Beach County Florida House seat held by a Republican may be a 'coin toss' in 2024

Florida Democrats, after suffering election losses, eye grassroots organizing for young voters in comeback plan

Leadership Blue, a weekend-long event attended by Florida's top Democratic leaders, featured Chair Nikki Fried, Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book and House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell and also brought in West Wing actor Bradley Whitford as a keynote speaker. It was not an exclusively young-voter-focused event, yet its mission to encourage voter mobilization involved young voters honing in on social issues like protecting abortion rights, promoting gun safety measures and pushing for LGBTQ+ rights.

One major reveal: Party leaders started a youth council in the state to energize these young voters, and tasked D'Onofrio with leading it.

D'Onofrio said his mother's death in 2020 when he was just 15 is one of the reasons he got involved in politics. He said his mother always cared about politics, but the Black Lives Matter movement protesting George Floyd's killing by a police officer in May 2020 was the spark that drew him to a cause.

"I wanted to get involved," D'Onofrio said.

He did volunteer work with campaigns, and at 17 years old he cofounded the Gen Z for Crist coalition for 2022 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist. Now 18, D'Onofrio is deputy strategy director of Voters of Tomorrow, a get-out-the-vote organization for younger voters.

"That's my biggest goal," he said. "I really want to just build youth involvement in the party. I want to build youth involvement in politics and make sure that everyone knows anything is possible."

Other issues of national importance have since arisen for him and others his age, D'Onofio said, like abortion rights, gun safety and student loan debt. In Florida, he said the urgency is greater because of "drastic and extreme" measures like the permitless concealed weapons law, the six-week abortion ban and laws that some feel target the LGBTQ community.

Tom Valeo, president of the Palm Beach County Young Democrats, agreed. He said Leadership Blue's move to bring in a famous actor and organize high school and college Democrats in the youth council to strategize voter turnout was one way to "fire up" the young voter base.

"I think young people are fired up, you know, to push back against some of the extremism coming from Tallahassee," Valeo said. "You're seeing a lot of young people stepping up to run and I think that just really just emphasizes that folks know, there's a moment here and they want to step up to the plate."

Trump at Turning Point Action: Donald Trump focuses on young voters at Turning Point Action conference

Young conservative rivals at Turning Point saw things very differently

The weekend after Democrats met at Leadership Blue, young Republicans, conservatives and far-right voters flocked to West Palm Beach for a conference held by Turning Point Action, the nonprofit arm of Turning Point USA. Turning Point Action is a powerful organization that hosts energetic conferences, promotes activist mobilization and raises money.

Turning Point Action brought political firepower with a lineup led by former President Donald Trump and MAGA GOPers U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz plus U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and former Fox News co-host Tucker Carlson. All called for more abortion restrictions, loosened gun laws and freedom of speech in education.

Speakers lambasted "sinister" political forces in America, as described by Trump, to cheers from the audience. They also applauded exuberantly for calls to remove "diversity, equity and inclusion" from educational programs, restoring energy independence so "young people can once again afford to buy a house," and requiring universities to offer job and career placement services in order to receive federal dollars.

Reeves, a Fort Lauderdale resident who trekked up Interstate 95 for the gathering, said she thinks young Republicans became much more involved because of the pandemic.

After seeing how multiple states shut down their economies while Florida remained open and "handled things differently," Reeves said more people began wondering whether lockdowns or "vaccine mandates" were problematic.

"I think that kind of got people going," said Reeves, who is vice president of the Broward Young Republicans. "When it becomes personal to you is when you actually care."

Ashton Poludniak, a 19-year-old attendee from Orlando, said the pandemic shutdown was a major reason he wanted to get involved in the Republican party. He said his family used to regularly go out together and was affected by the lockdowns. As he began to get more interested in public policy, Poludniak said it was shocking to see abortions allowed in late pregnancies in other states.

All of that, he said, was consciousness-raising for him.

"I started seeing the issues in America, and I woke up ... starting to see stuff for myself, and it got me more engaged to, like, start learning about it," Poludniak said.

Some of the Democrats' talking points also are turn-offs, said Katherine Sell, 27. She thinks student loan debt forgiveness and housing affordability are a "result of big government."

"I think at my core, I just really value small government. The larger the government, the more problems there are," she said. "I would really just like to see the government have a little bit of a smaller hand in our day-to-day lives."

And sometimes, she added, what drives someone to engage in politics is an everyday event rather than some global, big-picture issue.

"I think people don't really start to get involved until it affects them," Sell said about energized young voters. "Once they get a bad grade in school because they wrote something that their teacher didn't agree with, or once they're denied something just for unfair treatment, that's when they're like, 'Wait, what is this?'"

Turning Point mobilization giving GOP an edge in reaching out to younger voters

It can be well understood why Turning Point, which has held previous summits here, may feel at home in Florida. The state turned from swing state purple to GOP crimson between 2012 and 2022. Republican registered voters now outnumber Democrats and the GOP dominates state government by ample margins.

The state is home to the party's two national leaders, the former president and the incumbent governor, both who are seeking the party's presidential nomination.

Turning Point's presence also speaks to an advantage the right has developed over the political left in reaching out to young citizens.

Founded a decade ago by a then-teenager, Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point organization has turned into a political powerhouse that generates tens of millions of dollars each year; its summits across the country drew thousands of youths and are attended by the top right-wing political players.

Sell, the 27-year-old from Fort Lauderdale, spoke to just that.

"I think I've met a lot of people that were, like, here for the first time, or they really have had no interaction in politics before this," she said. "So it's refreshing to see those people come here not knowing anything and then walking away feeling like they can go out and do something, so I think there's value in that."

That's caught the attention of the youngest member of Congress, 26-year-old Democratic U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost of Orlando. But Frost, the first Gen Z elected to Washington, said "the left" has mobilized, too.

"On the left, we have many different organizations that might be a little smaller in terms of conferences and etc., but those organizations and the Democratic Party itself reaches beyond the walls of the already involved young people, and I think that's really the difference between the two apparatuses there," Frost said.

Moreover, Frost argued Turning Point appeals mostly to youth voters already within the "political bubble" and that it is "very specific to a group of folks that are very radicalized within the Republican Party."

The bigger challenge for Democratic young voters, he said, is convincing them that change is possible and that their policy aspirations are attainable by engaging the political arena.

President Joe Biden's favorability has remained at a record low of about 40%, and multiple campaign promises that prompted youth voters to back the president have not been fulfilled. Those include canceling student debt, advancing more gun safety legislation and codifying Roe v. Wade reproductive rights into law.

Still, Frost said that measures like the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan, both major climate change and economic legislative pieces, did deliver on some of Biden's campaign promises.

Frost added that the younger generation understands what it is to fight for social problems in the long term, such as with Black Lives Matter or March For Our Lives, which focuses on gun-control legislation. That's why he said young voters understand that "denying Republicans the White House is an essential part of that struggle."

"We understand what it means to fight for something long-term," Frost said. "We also recognize the fact that we have this existential, neo-fascist movement growing on the right, and it scares the hell out of us, and we don't want anything to do with it."

Stephany Matat is a politics reporter for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY-Florida network. Reach her at smatat@pbpost.com. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Election: Democrats, Republicans seek young voters to boost 2024 base