This might partly be because 18-24 year olds have a history of poor turn-out at the polls in general. For 2020 (The last Presidential Election and a year of historically high turnout), The US Census Bureau has the 18-24 age range of US Citizens voting at a rate of 51.4% (Source, see Table 1, Row 9, Column L). The next lowest is 25-34 year olds at 60.3%. And it just goes up from there.
It's a bit of a self-feeding cycle. Young people don't vote, so politicians don't care about them. Politicians don't care about young voters, so young people don't show up at the polls. Sure, if some magical politician could figure out how to get young people to the polls, there's a lot of untapped potential. But, in reality, that's balanced against the potential of tuning out older voters, who show up at the polls regularly. Politicians and activists have been doing everything they can to get young people to show up at the polls, since I was young enough to be the target demographic. That was decades ago, and it hasn't helped much.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, you went to meet with some of the campus protesters out in Pittsburgh recently, you are in support of some of those young people who have chosen to protest against what's happening in Gaza. Do you hear from them that they're excited to go vote for Joe Biden?
REP. LEE: To be honest, you know, we don't. It's not a topic that, you know, always comes up, but it does a lot. I think that the number one goal for them right now, you know, just listening to what they had to say is that they want to see a ceasefire in Gaza, they want to see the indiscriminate bombings and killings and right- that is the reason why they're on there's a lot of noise around this that- that distracts from that. There's a lot of noise that tries to take away from that central message. But, that is the central thing they are fighting for and they believe and they feel like our government can do more. And that's what they're looking for. They're looking for some sort of acknowledgement from our leadership, that they hear our needs, that they hear these young people saying that we want our country, we want our government to go in a different direction.
We don't hear any kind of students are exited to vote for toddler Trump either.
But I hope the students will vote for Biden as the obvious lesser evil.
I hope so too, but I also hope that the margin is thin as a wire, and ideally, that voter turnout on both sides sets record lows. And I hope it results in better candidates in the future, and maybe a 3rd and 4th party emerging to fill the voter gaps. I don't think any of this will happen, but it'd be nice.
And I hope it results in better candidates in the future
That won't happen.
and maybe a 3rd and 4th party emerging to fill the voter gaps.
Only way that happens is if we swap to proportional voting instead of first past the post. As long as it's a choice between the DNC and GOP neither party is going to let that happen either. Most likely scenario that sees that become a reality is that the GOP finishes imploding and in the confusion and power vacuum left behind enough of a coalition forms to get it passed. Still a long shot though.
Low turnout will never steer a party away from the status quo. The only message it sends is that you don't vote, so there's no point spending any effort trying to connect with you.
for them = nothing they've done is bad enough to lose your vote, so they might as well keep on doing it.
Voting for someone else = voting for Trump, even if it's 3rd party.
Honestly, I'd like to be able to use my vote to take 1 vote away from a candidate. Just count me as -1 for Trump. Let it send the message that I don't like any candidate enough to vote for them; the only thing I care about is that it isn't him.
Yeah if it wasn't for Trump and Project 2025 literally out there saying they want to end democracy, I would be saying go vote and just leave blank every race where you don't like any of the candidates. Then it's public record that you will vote so suddenly your opinion matters. Have to win the state legislatures to get election reform. Then we will see viable third parties at the local level and grow to national.
Rep. Summer Lee, a progressive Democrat from Pennsylvania who recently visited pro-Palestinian protesters at a Pittsburgh campus, said Sunday that "we don't" hear if college students are excited to vote for President Biden this upcoming November.
Lee, who has been critical of Israel's military actions in Gaza, won her primary contest in Pennsylvania's 12th District on Tuesday with a significant margin.
The Democratic opponent in the primary, Bhavini Patel, ran as more of a moderate and challenged Lee's willingness to break with Mr. Biden's support for Israel.
Lee was one of the 36 Democrats and 21 Republicans last week who voted against the House bill that will provide $26.4 billion to Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Wednesday said U.S. college protesters are "antisemitic mobs" and that the demonstrations are "reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s."
"When you're on the ground, you see that all of those students have been working together or had been learning and educating together and they are all in one voice crying for a difference in direction, particularly from Benjamin Netanyahu.
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