Student Voter Turnout Doubles from 2014 to 2018

Are young Americans finally ready to fulfill our hopes for civic engagement and take elections seriously? A new report from the Tufts Institute for Democracy and Higher Education says a lot more university students voted in 2018 than did in the preceding midterm election:

In the 2018 midterm elections, the average student voting rate at U.S. colleges and universities more than doubled from the last midterm elections, jumping from 19% in 2014 to 40% in 2018. The fact that student voting rates increased is no surprise since, according to the U.S. Election Project’s analysis, voting rates among all Americans increased 13.6 percentage points. What is surprising is that college and university student voting rose a remarkable 21 percentage points.

…Historically, voter participation rates in presidential elections have been far higher than in midterm elections. This election defied this longstanding pattern. The 2018 average institutional voting rate of 39.1% is far closer to those of the last two presidential election (47.6% in 2012, 50.9% in 2016) than to the previous midterm (19.7%). This suggests a promising trajectory to student voting [N. Thomas, A. Gismondi, P. Gautam, and D. Brinker, “Democracy Counts 2018: An Analysis of Student Participation. Institute for Democracy & Higher Education,” Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, September 2019].

City and suburban students voted at somewhat higher rates than small-town and rural students:

The data the highest turnout comes from education, social sciences, and humanities students; the lowest turnout comes from students in health, business, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math):

Hmm… it appears that either that an education in the humanities fosters civic participation or individuals who take civic participation seriously are more inclined to study education, social sciences, and the humanities.

Naturally, since students appear to be turning out more to vote, Republicans are trying to throttle campus voting:

Lawmakers are taking notice that students — who overwhelmingly tend to vote liberal — may play a role in the upcoming election. Some lawmakers have tried to limit early voting centers on campuses, as a result. For example, the former Maine governor Paul LePage, a Republican, went so far as to disseminate misleading information about the requirements for voting.

Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa, recently was accused of disenfranchising college voters by scheduling two special elections on dates when certain students would not be on campus [Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, “Massive Surge in Student Voting,” Inside Higher Ed, 2019.09.20].

…except when they think it will help the Republican agenda:

Politico documented how Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, a staunch conservative and Trump supporter, tried to shift the academic calendar so his student body, which is largely right-leaning, would be around to influence local elections [Bauer-Wolf, 2019.09.20].

Don’t let tricksters or mid-terms get in the way, students. Keep registering, and keep coming out to vote. America needs all of us to make elections work!