Youth vote could be a factor in 2020 presidential election
After the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971 following the passage of the 26th Amendment, Richard Nixon and his allies fretted that the newly empowered youth vote would rise up against him when he faced voters the following year and hand the presidency to an anti-Vietnam War Democrat like George McGovern.
It turned out that Nixon had little to worry about. Many of those new, college-age voters ended up casting ballots for him in a 49-state landslide that pulverized McGovern. In the half-century since, young voters have had periodic bursts of engagement, such as when Barack Obama first ran for the White House in 2008, but have mostly been known for their unreliability or apathy.
Many prognosticators forecast that will not be the case in 2020.
According to a Tufts University study, this year voters under 30 could break the record for participation they set in 2008. If it comes to pass, the 2018 midterm elections would have helped set the table for this development – two years ago, 40% of voters under 30 cast ballots, compared to just 19% in the 2014 midterms.
In fact, millennials and Generation Z are just a handful of years away from overtaking baby boomers and Generation X as being the largest voting bloc in the country, according to demographers. Their sensibilities have been shaped not by the turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s, or the relative placidity of the 1980s and 1990s, but by the crises that have unfolded in the 2000s, including 9/11, the Great Recession, the divisiveness of Donald Trump’s presidency, school shootings, the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in May.
Simon Rosenberg, president of the left-leaning think tank NDN, told The Washington Post, “All of these things, together with a visceral distrust of the president, has created a perfect storm for what could be a historic level of youth turnout this year.”
Matt Mansfield, a 21-year-old senior majoring in sports broadcasting at Waynesburg University, cast his first vote in a presidential race this year. Mansfield and his friends have student debt at the top of their list of concerns, along with health care and the environment.
“I’m very excited to vote,” Mansfield explained. “I want to have my say for what the direction of the country will be.”
A lot of other Waynesburg University students are interested in the election, according to Andrew Hreha, a senior communications major and editor of the campus newspaper.
“A lot of people are engaged,” Hreha said. “A lot of people seem really informed. A lot of people are really getting into it.”
Criminal justice reform, the climate, and health care are among the issues his fellow students are concerned about. A registered Libertarian, Hreha said, “I think with the stuff that’s going on right now, it’s impossible to ignore. As we grow older and grow into adulthood, it will be even more so.”
The tenor of the debate has been contentious throughout this election season. Throughout it, Nickolas Campbell Bartel, a sophomore at Washington & Jefferson College, has been leading the nonpartisan Student Voting Coalition, which seeks to promote involvement in the political process. He acknowledged that the election season has been stressful, but that the coalition has tried to foster civility on campus.
“There is a desire, at least at W&J, to work across the aisle,” Campbell Bartel said.
Among the issues that have been driving discussion at W&J are LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, protecting the environment and immigration policy, particularly since W&J has some foreign students in its ranks.
“There’s a lot of support for our international students on campus,” Campbell Bartel said.
While students at California University of Pennsylvania are perhaps just as polarized as their parents or grandparents, “Younger people seem to be more open to talking to each other and hearing other people’s points of view,” according to Christopher Lisle, a senior majoring in political science at Cal U.
He is involved with the Campus Election Engagement and American Democracy projects at Cal U. The climate, student debt, income inequality and race relations are among the issues his peers are most concerned about, according to Lisle.
“I do think there is enthusiasm,” he explained.
Joseph DiSarro, a professor of political science at W&J, thinks there is interest in the election on campus, but there might have been more in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was on the ballot and the possibility of the first female president was in the air. In the end, DiSarro believes students will vote based on the same pocketbook issues that motivate their elders, namely jobs, the economy and health care.
“Students are looking at the day they will graduate and have to get employment,” he said.
Whether students stay as involved throughout their adult lives can sometimes depend on their degree of disappointment if their favored candidate loses, DiSarro explained, or whether their favorite candidate wins, but doesn’t deliver the results they promised.
“Politics is complicated,” DiSarro said. “And most people want results, and getting results in politics takes a great deal of time.”