Abortion ruling tipped to turbocharge US college voting turnout

Four years after a record US youth voter turnout for a non-presidential cycle, the Supreme Court abortion ruling is driving expectations that levels could rise even higher, giving young Americans newfound levels of respect in policymaking.

About 28 per cent of eligible voters aged 18 to 29 participated in the 2018 election, about double the proportion in the equivalent 2014 congressional election, according to data compiled by Circle, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, at Tufts University.

Recent polling by Circle, however, found that 40 per cent of youth in that age range – especially women – describe the top court’s decision ending the federally guaranteed right to abortion as making them more likely to vote in this year’s midterms.

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A separate survey by College Pulse, which focuses on voters who are college students, found 38 per cent describing themselves as definitely planning to vote in the November election.

It’s a continuing turnaround, said Terren Klein, chief executive of College Pulse, from the long-standing reputation of students and youth voters as unreliable when it comes to the time to cast ballots.

Turnout among voters in the 18-29 age range jumped nearly 80 per cent between the 2014 and 2018 elections, the largest increase of any age group, Mr Klein said.

“Bottom line,” he said, “is that college students are paying more attention to the elections than the general population are led to believe.”

Universities have been helping push that trend in recent years, through steps that include concerted voter education campaigns and strategies to ease various logistical hurdles found to hinder student voters.

Those ramping up such efforts include the University of California system, which recently outlined a new set of pro-voting steps in areas that include appointing a person at each campus to work with local election officials to publicise on-campus voting locations and options.

The Biden administration has also set out a requirement for educational institutions in most states to make good-faith efforts to distribute voter registration forms to their students.

Yanna Krupnikov, professor of political science at Stony Brook University, said that she too recognised the possibility of students and other youth voters moving past the years of politicians not taking them seriously.

The Circle polling data do appear to reflect “genuine engagement and a genuine desire on the part of the respondents to translate their reactions to the Supreme Court ruling into votes”, Professor Krupnikov said.

Yet the available data by demographic groups just aren’t strong enough this far from the election, she said, to allow robust predictions of more records in youth voting, and of the ultimate level of youth commitment to the abortion ruling as a motivating factor.

“The issue will remain extremely important and salient for some proportion of people,” although surveys in another month should show if and how much concerns over the Supreme Court ruling will weaken among youth populations, Professor Krupnikov said.

This year’s election features voting for members of Congress, and various local races including 36 contests for state governors. But midterm elections – meaning they lack a US presidential contest – tend to have much lower voter turnout rates.

Youth voting, however, has been increasing sharply in recent years in both types of elections – two-thirds of US college students voted in the 2020 presidential election, a 14 percentage-point increase from the 2016 contest, according to the Tufts data.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com