Much ado is made each year about youth participation in politics. In order to boost turnout amongst youngsters, each year California holds a “mock election” in its high schools where students are able to cast votes for each of the issues that will be on their statewide ballot.
The results were not what everyone expected.
Only 49% of students voted for Kamala Harris. 35% voted for Donald Trump. An additional 7% voted for Claudia De La Cruz, and 6% voted for RFK. (2% and 1% voted for Jill Stein and Chase Oliver, respectively.) In the Senate race, Democrat Adam Schiff only edged Republican Steve Garvey by six points, 53-47.
Why is this remarkable? In 2022, Democratic Senator Alex Padilla won 69% of the student votes. And in 2020, Joe Biden won 68% of student votes, against just 18% for Donald Trump and 6% for Marxist Gloria La Riva. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 58% of the student vote against 20% for Trump. And of course, California is a very blue state; Biden got 63% of the vote there in 2020.
So, we just observed a sixteen-point swing against the Democrats for Senate and a nineteen-point swing against the Democrats for President. If the same trend held up for adults, then Kamala would lose the election in California.
Students also expressed conservative views in other parts of the election, with a raise in the minimum wage passing with just 67% support, a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to same-sex marriage receiving only 66% support, and the prohibition of penal slavery receiving the support of only a meager 53% of students.
Turnout in these mock elections is low. In 2020, just 43,000 students (out of around 1.7 million) cast their ballots. This year, only 71,000 students voted. While this could be seen as leading to spurious results, the correlation of prior mock election results with actual youth voting patterns indicates that the group of students who vote is indeed representative.
There are two lessons we can pull from this year’s mock election results. Firstly, young people are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with Kamala Harris and are increasingly turning towards Donald Trump as an alternative. A 49%-35% split is unheard of, especially in a state as blue as California. Secondly, many young people are dissatisfied with the two-party system altogether and are turning towards third-party candidates as alternatives. 16% of student voters voted third-party in this mock election, up from 14% in 2020.
These results come as Swarthmore itself is rocked by tendencies that advocate either voting third party or not voting at all. A poll conducted by The Phoenix last spring indicated that only 72% of eligible voters were certain to vote. Of those voters, 81% intended to vote for Joe Biden. 32% of all eligible voters indicated they wouldn’t vote for Biden regardless of whether they voted or not. Students for Justice in Palestine, a major activist group at Swarthmore, “stands against participation in the upcoming presidential election” and has called upon its supporters to “reject the 2024 election.”
Swarthmore College’s voter turnout has historically been high, reaching 85% in 2020 (versus 73% for colleges statewide and 76% for the state overall). But if Swarthmore College voter turnout is lower this year, do not blame the college for not doing enough or the far-right for suppressing turnout. It’s the students who don’t want to vote, and it’s the Democrats who need to do more if they want student votes.
