Young Voters Helped Biden Beat Trump After Holding Back in Primaries
For many young Democrats, President-elect Joe Biden wasn’t their top choice in the party’s 2020 primaries. They helped send him to the White House anyway. Voters under 30 sided with the more liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont over Mr. Biden in the primaries, and in some early contests they made up a smaller share of the electorate than in 2016. But in the November election, turnout among people between 18 and 29 years old rose compared with 2016, voting data show, as Mr. Trump’s bid for re-election helped spur record voting among Republicans and Democrats across most demographic groups.
Young voters backed Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump by 61% to 36%, according to AP VoteCast, a large survey of 2020 voters. College towns, in particular, appear to have been key to Mr. Biden’s success in top battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Despite challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, the Democrat improved on his party’s 2016 performance in counties across the country that are home to big universities, a Wall Street Journal analysis found.
“This showed me how important it is to vote,” said Audrey Hsu, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania who cast an absentee ballot for Mr. Biden. Ms. Hsu said she preferred Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in the Democratic primary, but she was motivated to vote for Mr. Biden by her opposition to Mr. Trump. “I feel like I’m a little bit more progressive than him,” she said of Mr. Biden, “but overall, I support him, and I definitely wanted to get Trump out of office.” Democratic organizers are hoping to keep young voters engaged in a pair of runoff elections in Georgia that will decide control of the Senate and could shape Mr. Biden’s agenda. Voters ages 18 to 29 made up 16% of Georgia’s voters in the general election, according to AP VoteCast.
(snip)
In Washtenaw County, home of the University of Michigan, Mr. Biden received nearly 101,000 more votes than Mrs. Clinton got four years earlier. Ingham County, where Michigan State University is located, provided 20,000 more votes to Mr. Biden than it had to Mrs. Clinton. The 120,000 additional Democratic votes from those two counties almost equaled Mr. Biden’s margin of victory in the state—147,000 votes—which he flipped after Mr. Trump won it in 2016. “In many of these states, young voters were the difference between winning and losing,” said Guy Cecil, chairman of the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA.
In an election year that saw daily life upended by the pandemic, young voters faced a series of complications that affected where they could cast ballots. Some universities limited campus housing to curb the spread of the virus, while others went entirely virtual, sending many students home to other towns or states. On campuses that allowed students to return, dorms were often placed on lockdown, forcing political groups to rethink their canvassing plans.
(snip)
Young voters identified the pandemic, economy and racism as the most important issues facing the country, according to AP VoteCast data. Polls over the summer showed Mr. Biden picking up support as marches against racism and police violence prompted new activism... Tovah Frockt, a 19-year-old sophomore at UW-Madison, voted for Mr. Biden in Wisconsin despite considering herself to be more progressive than the president-elect. “He is progressive enough for what the country can handle at this time,” she said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/young-voters-helped-biden-beat-trump-after-holding-back-in-primaries-11606399200 (subscription)