This story was produced in collaboration with Talking Eyes Media and Amplifier Fellows.
Four years ago, Georgia was at the center of a political maelstrom. On top of the two runoff elections that resulted in Democratic control of the Senate, there was also Donald Trump’s demand that Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “find” 11,779 votes to secure his victory there. Georgia delivered high drama on an impressive scale.
The state is likely to be the site of a neck-and-neck race between Trump and Kamala Harris this year, with shifting demographics slowly nudging it from red to blue. The change is driven by growing numbers of immigrants, African Americans, and young people. But as we traveled around the state, it was clear that Georgia’s youth vote isn’t a gimme for Democrats.
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Earlier this month in Athens, Georgia, a young voter told me, “If there is a threat to democracy, it’s certainly not Donald Trump.” He detailed what he saw as the alleged abuses perpetrated by Democrats, including jailing Trump supporters and indicting him four times. “They forced Joe Biden off the top of the ticket against his will and appointed a replacement nominee,” he added. “Not elected, appointed a replacement nominee.”
Young conservatives are a formidable presence in Georgia, which has the highest proportion of people under 30 of any swing state. They will be instrumental in determining the outcome of the election. During my recent conversations with them, the economy repeatedly ranked as their top concern. Hardly anyone mentioned abortion, gender, or climate change. Most of them were politically active, belonging to groups like the College Republicans, Turning Point USA, and the Young Patriots Association, and several had interned at the state capitol.
“I think it’s insulting to assume that the people cannot tell whether information is true or it’s false.”
Jefry Capinegro, a junior at the University of Georgia, is a thoughtful, serious 24-year-old who sees himself as “pretty far to the right.” He says he’s deeply committed to the truth, and he reads the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, as well as bouncing between multiple TV news sources.
When I asked about potential threats to democracy, Jefry told me that Democrats are trying to censor conservatives on social media, a sentiment I heard multiple times from other young people. I pressed Jefry on whether it was okay to limit information that is false or incites violence. “I think it’s insulting to assume that the people cannot tell whether information is true or it’s false,” he said. He insisted that it is dangerous to allow the government to decipher fact from fiction because “we’ve seen these fact-checks to be wrong on numerous occasions.”
Jefry cited Trump and JD Vance’s claim that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets. He said that while it sounded crazy at first, it was actually based in truth—he had seen the video. He described police body cam footage that shows a Haitian woman with blood on her face as officers ask her repeatedly if she ate a cat that laid on the ground.
I found the video he was referencing. It turns out the incident happened 174 miles from Springfield, and it shows an American-born Black woman who later pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to multiple criminal charges. When I shared this information with Jefry via text, he immediately responded, “Thank you for finding that. I stand corrected. Perhaps not the best example to cite, but glad to know now.”
The following excerpts have been condensed for clarity.
Daniel Shaver
18-year-old college student, founder of Young Patriots Association
We’ve gone to a point now where the polarization between the Republican and the Democratic Party has gotten so bad that people are afraid to speak out. And I feel like to an extent that is a violation of people’s rights to freedom of thought and expression. I know people who have personally lost their jobs because their employers did not agree with their political beliefs. I’ve also seen people have things taken down on social media because their views were considered misinformation. And I think that is dangerous to personal freedom.
I have felt pressure, as far as societal pressure. If you don’t agree with me on this, then you’re not going to be part of our club. You’re not going to get this job. There’s a lot of that pressure going on. It’s the unspoken, the silent tension that people have to deal with. And I feel like that is very sad and it’s dangerous to the future of our country. You shouldn’t have to be afraid to say, I’m Republican, I’m Democrat, I’m independent. You shouldn’t have to feel that way. And we have to make sure that we’re all fighting to make sure that people feel safe to share their beliefs.
Miracle Jones
27-year-old health care human resources professional
I am a Christian, and I am a devoted Christian. So everything, my point of view, they are heavily biblically based. So when I’m looking for policies, I’m looking for policies that align more so with the Bible than anything else. Because for me, it’s always God first.
Fun fact: I’ve never registered to vote until this election, because I’m worried. I’ve never been worried. I’ve always had the mindset of God will take care of me, either way, no matter who gets in the office. But now, this time, I feel like it actually matters who gets in the office.
So with Trump policies, for instance, the gun laws, he’s, you know, pro-guns, the Lord, whether people have read that part in the Bible or not. He’s also for protecting ourselves. And then Trump he’s not for teaching you know 73 different genders or allowing men to participate in women’s sports. We all know what the Lord says about homosexuality and things of that nature. And then when it comes to the border thing, God is, he’s for borders, he’s for different nations. That’s why we have different nations and different languages to begin with, because if all the people try to come together like they once did back in the day, then they try to play God and he can’t have that, so he’s for the borders.
If you ask me, I think the Democratic Party is silencing me. I feel like they are the ones behind like the social media fact-checkers in some form or fashion, whether directly or indirectly. I think the freedom of religion is more so supported by the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.
Jose Barrera Bales
20-year-old election protection organizer for Common Cause, Georgia
I am disappointed in the 2024 election because the candidates are both on very extreme sides of the aisle. Neither one of them, you know, very much resonates with me politically. And they both have extraordinary plans that they want to implement that will increase our deficit probably more than we’ve ever seen before.
Julie Winokur: What do you say to your friends who are not voting?
Jose: I would say vote anyways, because, you know, even if it’s a protest vote, it still shows how un-content the American populace is. And even if you do vote for, you know, for somebody that I might not particularly agree with, it is a civic duty. It’s a civic responsibility. And it’s good for you to keep your voice as an individual out there.
I want to go into politics. Hope to be one of the first elected independents in Georgia. It’s a very lofty goal, some may even say impossible, but if I do achieve it, then, you know, it’ll change the status quo for the better, hopefully. The sense of hope for me is hopefully the future independent movement in Congress eventually will achieve term limits and corporate lobbying and end the political division between the Republicans and the Democrats. Maybe then the middle ground can start to mend the country a little bit.
Aqui B’Nek Wingo
26-year-old union electrician
Being black and a union member and not being a Democrat, it looks really, really weird. I see myself as a Republican in a lot of sense, but mostly I wish we had a more European style system where we have multiple different parties and everything, because there are some things Republicans do that I’m not really a big fan of and there’s some things the Democrats do that I’m a fan of.
Ever since I came out as a Black conservative, I’ve taken a lot of flak from my extended family members. I take a lot of flak even in my union. Just the other day, another black person made a racial slur towards me because I’m a Republican.
I’m not a big fan of free college for all because I’m not going to waste my own tax dollars on a useless liberal arts degree like gender studies or wherever these titles they bunch up together so people get degrees. That seems a huge waste of time and money. If we’re investing more into, let’s say, trade programs that we can go out to work, that’ll be better because in construction fields across the country, it’s such a huge shortage of people because the last 30 years there’s been a push for college, college, college. Trade is bad, trade is bad, trade is bad.
I don’t trust Western media, and I hate saying it like that, but our media, especially here in the US, is extremely biased. So what I always do is I go to Sky News. I’ll go to Visegrád 24 on Twitter. There’s Polish news I look at. I also look at DW, France 24, and sometimes the Japanese, because I want the most unbiased stuff that I can get, and the best way I can get it is by one looking at different countries in different news sources outside the country and multiple sources to gain a broader picture of what I want to see.
Jefry Capinegro
24-year-old college student
I am an immigrant to this country. I was born in Guatemala, and I was adopted when I was six months old. At the time, the immigration issue was maybe not as in the headlines as it is today, but as the immigration issue has come to the forefront.
Here at the University of Georgia, this community, this campus, we’ve seen the ugly side. Laken Riley took a jog one morning down by the intramural fields on the south campus, as many people do. But she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it was an illegal immigrant who attacked her, who sexually assaulted her, and who murdered her. It should have never happened. It happens far too often. One time was too many. But this community felt the impact.
Oftentimes people perceive the whole immigration argument is very black and white, very pro-immigration or anti-immigration. Well, certainly I’m pro-immigration. I myself am an immigrant. But the key word in there that seems to be somehow lost is ‘illegal’. The Republican Party, the conservative, whatever you want to call them, we are absolutely pro-immigration. I think we all understand that this country was founded and built on immigration. We are very pro-immigration. We’re just not pro-illegal immigration.
Abigail Ray
22-year-old college student
My feelings about the upcoming election, I would have to say, are: It’s nerve-wracking. It’s really nerve-wracking because I feel like we’re on a trajectory—like heading towards a cliff, like we’re going towards a cliff. We’re speeding there. And I feel like if we do not secure this election and if, in my opinion, the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, doesn’t win, I feel like we will not be able to, you know, turn the wheel and jerk it and save our country.
I feel like we need to save the country from further annihilation. I’ll give you an example. Flying around Athens, Georgia, for the last three days has been an airplane toting the banner that says: Abortion pills by mail. And rather than Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party wanting to advocate for, you know, a happier, healthier society where people can afford to have children and where men actually want to impregnate women and want to raise kids and have a happy family and a good society where kids can thrive, rather than do that, they want to make it easier for Americans to cut themselves down at the knee. They want to make it easier to take away our rights. And it just doesn’t make any sense.
Julie Winokur: The abortion pill airplane, is that a Harris campaign advertisement?
Abigail: No, there’s no name on the on the sign, but it’s blue. And we know that there were abortion vans outside the Democratic National Convention where they were literally having people come and get an abortion in a van. And so what you can detect from that is that they must not want to advocate for pro-American life. They must not actually love us.
Chaston Atkins
19-year-old college student, state secretary of the Georgia Association of College Republicans
I’ve always necessarily been critical of President Trump, and I think that I have not necessarily been on the populist bandwagon.
Because I am a political science major, a lot of my friends are politically engaged. I would say that maybe 35 to 45 percent of my friends are actually liberal or moderate or not necessarily conservative. And, you know, that just comes with the territory of being on a college campus, engaging with people who have different ideas. And so it just comes to dealing with those people, being cordial, being kind, knowing that we’re not going to agree on everything, but we have other things that we can agree on and that we should work on those things and try not to be hyperpartisan, which I think is detrimental not just to the individual but to the government and to society as a whole.
I don’t necessarily believe that there is a threat to democracy. I think people are hyperpartisan, they’re mad, they’re angry, they’re being hostile, and that’s something that you can say is brought on by politicians who are seen as somewhat demagogue-like.
I believe that former President Trump has already said that he would step down in case of him losing the election, but regardless as to whether he said it or not, I think he ultimately will. I think that everyone learned their lesson from what happened last time, that you can’t let things get out of control. You can’t let things become riotous. I don’t think that’ll happen at all this time. I think that regardless of the outcome, I think we’re going to be in safe hands.
Laura Kelley
22-year-old college student
Everything is so difficult with politics, in my opinion, because I’m a conservative and I believe that government should not be super involved in people’s lives. People should have the freedom to do what they want, and that’s the best thing about America.
So with books in schools, that’s so difficult. My mom is actually a librarian in an elementary school and it’s in a northern county in Georgia, so obviously the population is very conservative. And when this topic came to light the school board was super against certain books to be put into the schools. So therefore, my mom had to make those selections. But also it’s like those kids want to read those books. So it’s just so complicated, like maybe the kids should be able to buy it outside school if they really want to read those. But if the taxpayer is saying those books shouldn’t be allowed in schools, they shouldn’t. So I really don’t know what I believe in that.
