Many people KQED spoke with said election results left them feeling defeated. Some are unsure what real impact another march will have. And a significant number of the young people who were coming of age during Trump’s first term say they’re disillusioned with the Democratic Party. While there haven’t been mass protests in the streets, all of these contingents say they are looking toward Trump’s second term and preparing to fight it.
Max Flynt, who is a member of the General Union of Palestine Students at San Francisco State, said there wasn’t a possible election outcome that made Trump’s victory worth protesting.
“You can’t ignore the biggest anti-war movement in over half a century internationally, but also across campuses all across the United States, and expect young people to be excited,” he told KQED. “You can’t move to the right on immigration, brag about building Donald Trump’s border wall, prosecuting transnational gangs, demonizing immigrants and expect Democrats and young people to vote for the Democratic Party.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters have been a force on Bay Area college campuses since Israel began its war in Gaza after a Hamas-led attack killed 1,200 people in October 2023. Activists have criticized the Biden administration’s financial support for Israel throughout the war, which has now killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
Ahead of the presidential election, SF State’s General Union of Palestine Students, along with local pro-Palestine campus organizations, encouraged members not to vote for either Trump or Harris, running a “No more votes for genocide” campaign on social media.
“We will continue to declare our full support for Palestinian liberation and will not be fooled by a two-party system that continues to be complicit and in full support of the genocide in Gaza,” the organization posted on Instagram.
Young people between the ages of 18 and 29 did vote at a significantly lower rate — 42% compared to 52% — than in 2020, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
Even among those who were fans of Harris, Krosnick said the election’s circumstances are different now than they were in 2016. Then, it felt implausible that someone who used inflammatory language like Trump would be elected. There was outrage that he lost the popular vote.
This time, he won the electoral college more handily and is leading in the popular vote by more than a two-point margin. There’s much less shock because he’s held office before. In general, the feeling is more resignation than anger.
Whether those feelings linger or turn into determination and defiance will be an important indicator of how national politics will trend in the near future, Krosnick said.
“If the part of America that supports the Democratic Party becomes deactivated as a result of this, then the momentum of the Republican Party is going to be tremendous in the coming decades,” he said.
Republicans also gained a majority in the Senate, flipping four seats. Control of the House of Representatives has not yet been decided, but Republicans have already picked up two seats from Democrats.
“Protest will be critical for balancing the scales,” Krosnick said, adding that demonstrations will rely on young people to be successful.
In part, it’s easier for young people to take the time, he said. They also haven’t seen the political pendulum swing left and right as many times and, in the past, have usually been less disillusioned with the impact they can make.
“I think a lot more people just are taking their time to kind of process, accept what this means and then move forward,” said Zoe Tweedie, the president of the Stanford University chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
She and Brian Yan, another one of SF State’s General Union of Palestine Students leaders, do believe that young people will activate around Trump’s policies once he is in office.
Yan and Flynt are focused on how the Trump administration handles the war in Gaza. They expect Trump, who has urged Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza, will be less critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I think with Trump in office, this could galvanize people,” Yan said.
They see the second Trump term as an opportunity for Democrats to rally around the pro-Palestine movement and move toward the progressive wing of the party.
