Young Voters Voting More and Left, not Less and Less

 

Gideon Daley

    As young Americans enter the voting populations they are both leaning more progressive and voting more often, studies show. 

    New studies are finding that young people in America today are increasingly more likely to vote than before. 

Youth turnout has been a problem for many candidates, such as Bernie Sanders, who ran on the left wing of the Democrat Party as the candidate during the 2020 Democrat Primaries and who had a large portion of youth supporters. 

    A new study, however, from the Tufts University Center for Information and Research on Learning and Civic Engagement found that 50 to 52% voted in the 2020 presidential election, a, which is an increase compared to the 42 to 44% of young Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election. The CIRCLE study says that this increase in youth voting was key to President Biden’s victory, as young people in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania or Arizona primarily turned out for Biden.

    Nina Sukiasyan, a 19 year old St. Michael’s College freshman from Bedford Massachusetts who did vote in the 2020 presidential election, had a different impression than what the statistics show. 

“I don’t really think that they care that much about anything, or they just feel like their voices won’t be heard so they don’t bother,” she said about her fellow young voters. 

    However, Adam Bacon, an 18 year old Stonehill freshman from Lakeville, Massachusetts, observed the increase.

 “I think the last election had a lot more people turn up for voting, compared to previous elections,” he said. 

    It is possible to attribute this surge in youth voting to a surge in voting in general. Denise Graffeo, the town clerk in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, a small Massachusetts suburb of about 31,000 people, showed how this information can be compiled. 

    “After every election we generate a list of voters for that election, and you can download that into an excel spreadsheet and kinda look at the details and sort it by age,” she said on the information. 

Looking at the sheets, about 2,000 more Tewksbury residents voted in the 2020 presidential election, where town records show the Democrats won the town’s popular vote, than in the 2016 election, where town records show the Republicans won the town’s popular vote. 

    In 2020, young people were less likely to vote in person on election day, as they either used absentee ballots or voted early. The Circle study found that 70% of young people voted early, a number that was only beaten by 79% of the elderly, which the study attributed to concerns over COVID-19. 

    Joseph Meltzer, a 21 year old daycare worker from Arlington, Massachusetts, who said he generally votes in national elections, recalled voting early this year. “It doesn’t seem particularly different from regular in-person voting,” he said. 

    There is also a larger trend of young people leaning towards progressive politics. A poll by Harvard University’s Kennedy Institute of Politics of young Americans aged 18 to 29 found that young people are increasingly supporting traditional liberal causes. For example, when compared to polls done five years ago, there was a 16% increase in people who agreed with the statement, “The government should spend more to reduce poverty.” 

    Not all elections, however, are equal in turning out voters. A study by the National Civic League found that local elections, such as those for mayor or city council, had between 15% to 27% of eligible voters vote in them, and voters older than 65 were seven times more likely to vote in them than voters aged 18 to 34. 

    Icusa Kakinuma, a 19 year old Stonehill freshman, attributed this to a lack of public attention towards local elections. “I have to go out of my way to do research on my own rather than just scrolling through Twitter and seeing oh, Trump implemented this policy,” he said on these elections.

    Kakinuma was also not surprised by another trend a poll by Harvard University’s Kennedy Institute of Politics discovered: Young voters are increasingly liberal compared to older ones 

    For example, the Kennedy Institute poll found young people were 16% more likely to agree with the statement, “The government should spend more to reduce poverty.” 

Kakinuma found this made sense, as he had always assumed college aged Americans skewed more liberal than older ones. “I think it has been really interesting to see the shift to the left in terms of economics,” he said. 

Regardless of which side of the political spectrum they fall on, young voters in 2020 are much more politically active. The Kennedy Institute’s poll found that, while in 2009, shortly after President Obama’s inauguration, only 24% of young people surveyed considered themselves politically active, in 2020 that number had soared to 36%. 

Overall, The Kennedy Institute poll shows a marked increase not only in political engagement among youth, but also in hope for the nation. The study said that despite a seeming increase in public political polarization, 56% of American youth polled have hope for the future, in contrast today only 31% in the fall of 2017, and half of youth polled believed both sides of the political divide in the United States still have America’s best interests at heart, despite their disagreements.