Political messengers on both sides of the aisle are leaning on the same adjective in an attempt to appeal to young voters.
Democrats and Republicans might not agree on much lately, but they seem to be converging on an unlikely political buzzword. Wherever you look on the political spectrum, organizers and strategists seeking to appeal to young audiences are describing their efforts as “hot.”
Take Hot Girls for Zohran, a group that canvassed for Zohran Mamdani in his successful Democratic primary campaign for mayor of New York, and Hotties for Harris, the name of an after-party during last year’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Or look across the aisle to the right-wing women’s lifestyle magazine The Conservateur, which sells screaming pink hats that read “Make America Hot Again.” (Lara Trump has posed in one.) Raquel Debono, who advertises her series of social mixers for conservatives with the same phrase, puts it concisely in her Instagram bio: “Hotness is a bipartisan issue.”
Injected into a political context, the word is an appealing mix of cheeky and flattering, smug and vague. We are not a party of bespectacled policy wonks, it implies; we are young, virile and fluent in the language of the internet. You should hang out with us — and maybe vote with us, too.
The word seemed to creep into the political sphere with #HotGirlsForBernie, a social media campaign that emerged during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary to show that Senator Bernie Sanders’s supporters were not just “Bernie Bros.” But it has bled across party lines, picked up by any group trying to make a case for its ideological — or literal — attractiveness.
In February, Mary Beth Barone, a comedian in Brooklyn, created a social media video series about progressive political topics after feeling discouraged by the results of the 2024 presidential election. “Politics has seemed so stuffy and ruled by these ugly old white dudes that when you put an adjective like ‘hot’ in front of something, it just makes people inherently want to be a part of it,” she said in an interview.
