Young voters are poised to play a major role in this year’s presidential election. For many first-time voters every presidential election they can remember has been “the most important.”
According to the League of Women Voters, there are 40 million potential young voters from Gen Z alone. That includes 8 million who have reached voting age since 2022. All told, that’s around a fifth of the American electorate.
Weeks before the election, students gather on Skidmore College’s campus. Fallstaff’s, at one point an on-campus bar, is playing host to a vice presidential debate watch party.
It’s the Skidmore Democrats’ first major event of the year—there’s a lot of energy in the room as rows of students watch a projection of the CBS debate. Club organizer Jonah LeCompte is riding the night’s positivity.
“I definitely think I’m feeling pretty optimistic. I think you’ve always got to be, because that’s where energy feeds off. And if you’re not optimistic then you’re not going to go anywhere. And so, you’ve got to believe in something. And I think getting Trump totally out will be a start of that. But then I think you also have to, with that question, you still have to fight, too. There’s always going to be a fight to fight. And there’s still tons of people that believe many of Trump’s lies and I don’t think that’s going to leave—no matter what the results of the election this November,” said LeCompte.
Emilia Brueggemann, also a senior, is more focused on the civility on display between Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Ohio Senator JD Vance – watching them agree on some issues and have a productive debate, she says, was a nice change of pace to the past eight years.
“I’m not getting my hopes up because I have before and I’ve been devastated. But this, actually, I’m feeling really, really hopeful now just the fact that a conversation like that can occur. Like, even with Kamala and Trump we did not see that much agreement and that much bipartisan working together since like—that’s the first time I’ve seen that. So, I’m feeling really hopeful right now just about the future of our country and being able to have bi-partisan legislation passed and agreements come to and just not hate up on the screen for the first time. Which I feel like that debate’s the first time in a long time where I’ve seen that, so, right now in this moment I’m feeling great,” said Brueggemann.
Skidmore has hosted a number of speakers and events ahead of the election, preparing the nearly 3,000 students to head to the polls. Joe Walsh and Fred Guttenberg have been touring campuses as “Two Dads Defending Democracy.”
Former Illinois Congressman Walsh was a MAGA supporting Republican in 2016.
Guttenberg’s daughter was murdered in the 2018 Parkland school shooting.
In a political climate defined by polarization, largely driven by social media anonymity, they may have never discovered just how much they agree when it comes to gun control policies.
Guttenberg explains their unlikely friendship.
“Joe and I started out the way, unfortunately, far too many people engage in this country now which was arguing with each other, and not always nicely and not in person – online. And a few years ago, and I give him the credit, he made a reach out online that led to a real conversation, that led to us having more conversations and realizing, ‘I actually like this guy,’ and I think I’m not going to be wrong when I say he likes me. And we’ve developed a genuine friendship that caused us to realize we have far more in common than not,” said Guttenberg.
Walsh and Guttenberg understand that it can be hard to build trust across political differences. They still profoundly disagree on a number of important issues, but without the ability to trust those who hold opposing views, they suggest American democracy is doomed.
“The best thing that Fred and I did that got us to engage is we went private. We went offline. We used to hate on each other on social media, on TV. We’d go at each other like cats and dogs on this issue, and then we reached out to each other privately. We took our conversation offline. We went private, that then helped us to get to know each other and begin to find common ground. But it was going offline, going private,” said Walsh.
“Going private was a big deal, but I think even when people engage face-to-face, in private or not, they still struggle. They still don’t have the tools. And it is shocking to me that these tools are not even taught in school, and so I encourage young people to learn the art of listening. You know, not giving up your point of view, but listening and engaging in a conversation where there is a chance, because you took the time to listen to someone who has a difference of opinion, that you may discover moments of common ground. You may discover, even though you have a difference of opinion, that you misunderstood each other and you don’t have a reason to dislike one another,” said Guttenberg.
While Guttenberg likes to hammer home to young voters the idea of listening not to respond but to understand, Walsh has a different thesis.
“Go pull a lever, go vote. You know, you and I were talking about young people before we went on air, and I am so worried about the idea of young people not voting. And it’s something that doesn’t make sense to me, and I just want to tell you why. Young people say they want to be future leaders, they talk about all the things they want to do. They say when they are in charge—they need to understand if they don’t show up and vote in this election and vote for democracy, they are putting a death sentence to the idea of them being future leaders and in charge, OK? Democracy won’t survive their lack of participation in this election. And so, if they mean what they say, if they mean they’re going to be future leaders, they better get off their you-know-what,” said Walsh.
Skidmore polisci professor Bob Turner has noticed a change in his students since 2016.
“The most interesting and noticeable change I’ve seen about this election compared to previous ones is the lack of candidate stickers on water bottles and laptops. Students still have their strong political and policy preferences for certain candidates, but they are not advertising them as clearly or visibly as they were in the past. When I ask them about it, they said, ‘I don’t know, I sort of feel like it’s a little gauche or showy to be walking around with a hat.’ The one exception is the commando Harris Walz hat which seems to be a little bit of vogue,” said Turner.
Turner believes his students may be interacting with this election in more interesting ways because of their lack of visible support, not in spite of it.
“Because this election is so close and so hotly contested and could come down to hundreds or thousands of votes in some of these swing states, both of the candidates have made a far greater attempt to go on non-traditional venues to get their message out. And so my students report hearing them on unusual podcasts whether its ‘Joe Rogan’ or ‘Call Her Daddy,’ or seeing endless amounts of Tik Toks or other things on social media. So, the candidates, in their attempt to reach out to those low-propensity younger voters, are just hitting a lot more of our students so they’re just more aware of what’s going on,” said Turner.
Turner is focused on the bruising rhetoric and framing of 2024 as the most consequential election in American history.
“And when I think back to my own first vote in a presidential election between George Bush and Michael Dukakis, I never felt that George Bush was going to end democracy as we know it. He would enact policies that I might not like, but it was not the end-all-be-all and it was just an election and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I think one of the challenges of the heated polarization and heated partisan rhetoric is we’ve lost that sense that, ‘yeah, control of government flipped from one party to the other.’ And while that existential dread may drive voter turnout I’m not sure how healthy it is for the long-term functioning of a democratic system,” said Turner.
I sat down with a handful of first-time student voters to try and get an idea of how they’re approaching this election.
Sophomore Parker Kinney is a Republican, but is quick to note that he isn’t a Trump supporter. Kinney shares the professor’s concerns.
“It's disengaging people like me but I would say it's more engaging to the more uneducated population when it comes to politics, because it's very easy to scroll through Twitter and scroll through Instagram and see Trump wants a full out abortion ban or, Kamala’s letting everybody into the country and being like, ‘I don't like that, that's who I want to vote for,’ and just seeing posts like that on social media and getting this dialog from teachers fully ramps up the fact that my life is going to be severely changed, and it's either going to go to hell or it's going to drastically improve unless I get one of these candidates, I get my candidate of choice into office – or not even candidate of choice, I get the candidate running against this person in office,” said Kinney.
Sophomore Josselyn Herrera is from Texas. Many of her friends have been reluctant to register, and she places some of the blame on the glut of “critical” election language.
I feel like it's almost just like this continuous kind of fear mongering and continuous polarization coming from both parties. And I feel like it's really damaging because, you know, we had the Hillary and Trump, and it's like, oh, like, like, it's geared towards the demographic. And you're like, oh, like, this election is really important if you're part of a B, C and D demographic. And then we come to, like, Biden and Trump's election, and it's like, oh, well, this is kind of very important, especially for like, those women who are voting, especially after the loss of Roe v Wade, it's like, oh, like, this is such an important election. This could shift our democracy. And now it’s kind of like, ‘oh you have to, you have to, you have to,’ I feel like it's almost counterproductive, because now with people are just like, ‘oh well they say this every year, like, what's going to change?’ said Herrera.
First-year student Hugh Nickson doesn’t have a problem believing the hype.
“I think especially for Gen Z, every election is the most important election. It's our future, it's everything, it's the rest of our lives. So, they're always gonna have rhetoric. They're always gonna say, ‘oh, this is the most important thing for any particular reason.’ And, you know, they're kind of right. It's, it's our lives, you know, it's the path forward. And if we have one bad president, that's 10 years of potentially really bad suffering. I mean, like, we've had, even if you just predict, like, the past 50 years we've had relatively stable democracy and a relatively stable economy. But like, one poor decision in the Middle East leads to war, or one poor decision in a policy can lead to a housing crisis, and that affects millions of people. And so, like, it's tiring to hear that rhetoric. But I think you know, maybe life is tiring. It's just it's part of it. And every election that we have is always going to be important. Every president that we have is going to be important for a number of reasons,” said Nickson.
According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, 15% of votes for Joe Biden came from voters between 18-29 years old in 2020. Of voters that age, nearly 55% cast a ballot, up around 10% from 2016.
A new Harvard Institute of Politics survey finds that this year Harris has a 17-point lead over Trump with voters aged 18-29.