TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Young people often get a bad rap as being apathetic about voting, but analysts think young voters may have played a large factor in the high turnout for this latest midterm.
Naturally, if you want to recruit young people, you go where they are; and community organizers made a special effort to reach students at the University of Arizona.
Young people often have a reputation as unreliable voters much less likely to actually cast their votes than older people who think issues like taxes and social security have a greater grip on their lives.
But every student we asked said they did vote.
Andrew Fernandez says, “Yeah, I voted and the main issue that motivated me to vote was education.”
Amy is a UA Junior who says: “I think that maybe when we're younger, we're used to hearing about politics as these boring concepts of just folks who are just suited up in Congress talking about taxes and cuts and budget stuff. Things that may not be very may not seem very relevant. But in the end, even the economic issues are relevant, but more so of course, the social issues.”
Alex Kack is an organizer with NextGen America–an organization that works to get young citizens to vote.
“Men and women talked about how important reproductive freedom was and some of the fear and anxiety that they had around that issue. But we saw student debt, playing a huge, huge issue even with, you know, developments that we've seen in the White House recently, students here are still very concerned about what that looks like for their future. You know, they're concerned about the climate crisis. They're concerned about income inequality.”
UA Freshman Haven Tamini says she voted back in her home state of Oregon. She says, “I honestly think young people are one of the best voters. They're the change makers in the world. And I think that they are going to be the ones that are voting right now.”
In a student population you may hit the question of do you vote where you go to school or vote in your hometown? Sometimes students may vote in their hometowns because they don’t know if they’ll live here after graduation.
Some analysts say young people are often under-represented in polling because when a pollster calls, they’re likely to assume the call is spam and reject it.