Millennial and Generation Z voters are expected to turn out in record numbers for the Nov. 3 presidential election, experts say, continuing a trend of increased participation since the midterm elections in 2018. “A lot of students are back in their hometowns, so they are more likely to be able to vote easily,” said Josh Kutner, a senior at the George Washington University and chairman of GW College Republicans. Josh Kutner (courtesy photo)“Campaigns are really looking to young people to be leaders and help fight for their values and their visions for their community, so I think that’s been a pretty big role in getting young voters engaged all across the country this year.”
Among the nearly 240 million eligible voters in the United States today, about 20% are 18- to 29-year-olds who are Jordan Harzynski (courtesy photo)“We’re also seeing that the pandemic has helped many young people, almost 45 percent, say that the decisions made by elected officials impact their everyday life, and that’s a lesson that they’ve learned over the past several months while we’ve been going through this,” said Kiesa. Social media have been key to galvanizing younger voters, stated Ben Kelley, a young voter from Illinois. President Donald Trump “is really the first president to be constantly engaged with social media and to use it to communicate his inner thoughts and policy proposals,” stated Kelley, and “that is where young voters are.”According to Twitter, Trump has 87.4 million followers and has tweeted more than 58,100 times. Former President Barack Obama has 124.6 million followers and tweeted more than 16,000 times. Jordan Harzynski, a freshman at George Mason University in Virginia, runs the “youngvoters4joe” Instagram account, which has more than 1,100 followers and promotes young voter turnout for Democratic candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden. “We can’t keep tweeting and posting on Instagram; we have to do the real work,” said Harzynski. “I’ve seen that as a problem with my group, people like to watch the debates but they don’t like to make phone calls. We have to make phone calls; we have to put in the work to win this election.”
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