Some seniors at Delta High School are getting old enough to vote, but how likely are they to exercise that right, and why will they or won’t they go to the polls this November?
According to Statistica, 55 percent of youth aged between 18 and 29 voted in the 2020 presidential election, an 11% jump from the 2016 election, but only a 10% jump from the 2012 election. However, this is still significantly lower than the percentage of adults who voted in the last elections.
So, while political engagement is definitely going up among young people, has that trend hit Delta County?
Senior Leeland Ball, who will be voting this year, said, “I wanna do everything I can to create a better America for me and the people around me.”
Unfortunately, though, this isn’t a common sentiment among students today. According to the Florida Atlantic University, “In many countries in Europe and North America, the youngest voters have the lowest participation rates.”
Zora Thomas, a junior at DHS said, “[It’s] not likely at all [that I vote], I am very ignorant when it comes to politics [and] I’m an independent and perfectly happy with that.”
Even in the United States, where the political system is primarily dominated by the two major parties, independently registered voters are becoming more common.
A Gallup poll in January this year found that 43 percent of U.S. adults identified as independents, 27 percent as Republicans, and 27 percent as Democrats. The share of independent voters has been consistently rising since 1991, except in the first years of the Obama administration between 2004-2008 where Democratic voters (33%) outnumbered independent voters (30%) by three percent and Republican voters (29%) by four percent.
This difference is even more pronounced in the younger voting population with 52 percent of Generation Z registering as independent.
Senior Connor Reed, who is not yet 18, but will be by the November elections, said, “I think that voting is the most important duty in this country.”
To Reed though, there is one voting issue that is more important than all the others.
Reed said, “Mostly economic issues influence my voting.”
And Reed isn’t alone in this, according to William Galsting at the Brookings Institution, “When asked whether economic or social issues would be more important in determining their vote in 2024, 62% of young adults chose economic issues, the largest share of any age cohort, while only 29% opted for social issues.”
