The Up and Up goes to Arizona 🏜🌵: Part 2
The Up and Up goes to Arizona 🏜🌵: Part 2
Insights from a listening session with students at Arizona State University. Hot topics: Could 'fear' be driving the partisan gender gap for young voters? Abortion access and local politics.
Last week, I wrote about how a group of students from community colleges in Maricopa County are feeling about the 2024 election. As noted, when it comes to the significance of youth voter turnout, Arizona ranks #3 on the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts’ (CIRCLE)’s list of the top 10 states where young voters are predicted to have the biggest impact on the results of the 2024 presidential election — and Maricopa County is a key area.
Today, I’m sharing insights from a group of high school and college students I spoke with on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe. More to come on Tucson.
Arizona State University in Tempe
It was over 100 degrees on the day I sat down with a group of mostly young women in the basement of Arizona State University’s Memorial Union campus center. Of the group, three were high school students (though one just graduated), three go to Arizona State University, and one is an incoming law school student. Everyone who is eligible to vote plans to do so in November — and most in the group are either involved with Young Democrats at ASU or Civic Engagement Beyond Voting, a grassroots organization in Arizona focused on state and local politics.
The youth partisan gender gap at play
I’ve been really curious about the partisan gender gap for young Americans, which has researched and written about extensively. The morning I sat down with the group at ASU, Cox had published new research out of the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute titled: “An Unsettled Electorate: How Uncertainty and Apathy Are Shaping the 2024 Election.” The data includes new findings on young voters’ presidential candidate support by gender, showing that young men ages 18-29 are split between support for President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in 2024, while young women support Biden by a 20-point margin, as shown below.
Wondering how this gender gap may be playing out in the day-to-day life for young Americans — especially in a key swing state — I asked the group at ASU if and how they feel this dynamic shaking out in their communities.
Samantha and Allison, both 17-year-old high school students in Phoenix, were among the first to chime in. They believe young women are leaning left out of fear for state-level policies that impact their individual lives and rights, namely abortion and reproductive health care access. The Arizona state Supreme Court this year upheld a near-total abortion ban in the state, but the state legislature repealed that ban. The repeal will go into affect in September.
“Abortion laws aren’t going to affect young men the way that they will women,” said Samantha.
“Especially in high school, young men don’t think about topics like women do. They’re not afraid for their lives every day because they don’t know what’s going to happen with abortion. They don’t have the same worries,” said Allison. “I definitely see that a lot of my friends, a lot of the girls I know, are more liberal than boys, because they just see the world in a different view.”
For their part, Gem, a 19-year-old ASU student from Chandler said as a part of the school’s Young Dems chapter, it’s obvious to them that more women come to their group meetings than men.
And Sarakanti, who just graduated from high school in Phoenix, said she believes the gender divide is about feeling a personal tie to the issue.
“A lot of teenage guys, they can understand [an issue] but they just don’t want to. If it doesn’t affect them the way it affects us, they’re not going to want to try,” said Sarakanti, who just graduated from high school in Phoenix.
When it comes to the idea of “fear,” Lana, 20 and a student at ASU, said “there’s some peripheral issues that apply to us more: like contraceptives.” Overall, the young women said that in a state like Arizona, where abortion and reproductive health care access is on the line, they feel they have more at stake.
“Usually contraception falls on women. I don’t think it should, but it does,” Lana said. “I’m worried about access to OBGYNs and that kind of healthcare because a lot of OGBYNs don’t practice in states where they don’t know what they can practice.”
Sex has always been a concern for high school and college students. But the fall of Roe v. Wade and a lack of federally protected abortion access is changing young adults’ calculus — especially in Arizona where there has been confusion around abortion laws at any given point in time since the fall of Roe.
“High school is when a lot of people become sexually active, and there’s a lot of fear around that,” said Allison. On the continued discussion about abortion access and restrictions in Arizona, she said, “I think it’s definitely affecting the way kids are thinking now, and I just see so much fear in my school.”
“People don’t know what’s accessible to them,” Samantha said. “They might go to further extremes or dangerous routes if they think they don’t have access.”
As Sara pointed out, these dynamics are exacerbated by “restrictions around sexual education.”
“The only sex-ed I got was abstinence only,” said Gem.
Samantha and Allison don’t remember having any sex-ed in high school at all.
Beyond abortion, immigration and the tangible taste of election denialism
As for local issues, the group of students was hyper tuned into local politics. Beyond abortion and sex-ed, they listed labor, immigration, and election denialism as issues they care about most.
Living in swing districts in a swing state where some state legislators, Republican Party operatives, and candidates continue to deny the results of the 2020 election, Gem said they’ve seen lawn signs that say “stop the steal.”
“It has ignited parts of our community,” Gem said of election denialism.
Frustration with Biden, but plans to support him in November
The students described frustration with President Joe Biden, mainly because of his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza. But they still plan to vote for him, recognizing the weight of their vote in a crucial swing state.
“To me it feels like a bit of a necessity. We can make the difference in electoral college votes, and we don’t have a better option,” said Gem.
“I don’t think people in blue states understand that not voting for Biden, not voting, is a privilege,” said Mary, 21. “I feel like I have to vote for Biden. I will speak out against things I think are wrong, but the other option is Trump,” she said.
“I will be voting for Biden. It’s not my happiest vote. But I think living in a state like Arizona, where I saw the direct consequences of Roe v. Wade being overturned, we need to be thinking about the Supreme Court. We need to be thinking about our election infrastructure,” said Isabel, who’s 20 and the president of ASU Young Dems.
Trust and party ID
On the idea of trust, the students said their teachers and family have been crucial in shaping their trust and getting them interested in politics. But as Samantha pointed out: “Right now a lot of people lack nuance in their views and you can trust people but you also have to be responsible for your own actions.”
The students spoke about the efficacy of local politicians, but are more skeptical of federal elected officials. In a state like Arizona, they’ve seen federal politicians who start out as progressive shift allegiances because of the pull of electoral politics in a purple state. They pointed to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema as a prime example of a politician who ran on one policy platform and adopted another once in office. That dynamic has contributed to a distaste and mistrust of federal politicians — but they described trust and admiration for local leaders.
Despite some in the group being involved with Young Dems, most of the students said they feel they’re more left leaning than Democratic party leaders (adding that they identify more with local progressive elected officials, like state Rep. Annalise Ortiz).
The potential for reverse coattails
Along those lines, national political operatives like of Run For Something — which supports young, progressive state and local candidates across the country — have been bullish on the “reverse coattails” theory, which is the idea that down-ballot progressive candidates who build trust in and excite communities could help boost voter turnout and in turn help the top of the ticket. In fact, a poll from Run For Something and
’s youth-focused Social Sphere commissioned this spring shows that 61% of young Democrats in swing states say they are more likely to vote if there is a young progressive candidate running down-ballot.Organizers looking to turn out young voters in Arizona spoke to how this is playing out in real time.
“I personally am not going to use my organization to be an all out for Biden organization, and I don’t mean we’re not engaged. But I’ve always seen our campus group as a group that engages locally. I’d love to turn us out for local candidates. I think your work for local candidates goes a lot further,” Isabel said. “If you encourage people to start voting blue at the bottom of the ballot, chances are that’s going to trickle up and they’ll vote for Biden in the long run.”
Gem, who works in the labor movement, agrees.
“That’s definitely been the standpoint for a lot of organizing I’ve seen in the labor movement as well. We focus mostly on Arizona because Biden is not a really easy sell for most people. Unless you are an avid MSNBC watcher, it’s hard to sell people on Biden, and even then, some of the most avid MSNBC watchers don’t like him,” they said. “But we have such strong down ballot people… really interesting progressive people.”
Gem mentioned state Rep. Lorena Austin, who’s Arizona’s first non-binary state representative, Tim Stringham, who’s running for Maricopa County Recorder, and state Rep. Sarah Liguori.
Why politics?
The students I spoke with at ASU were clearly all pretty political informed and involved. So I asked what motivated them to get into politics and why they’ve continued to tune in.
Isabel pointed to the local candidates and community organizers who helped her believe in the purpose of politics.
“I feel like I was really lucky that my first exposure to politics or politicians was local state legislature candidates. They were real people, they were moms and teachers in my community, and I felt like that built my faith in the system that people are in it to do good,” she said.
Gem, who is transgender and who’s parents are lesbian, said that for them, politics is personal.
“I’m the kid of two lesbians. Your family gets politicized. I kind of had to care from an early age. And then I realized I was trans and I was like, ‘Oh god, not again.’ These culture wars have hands.”
And Mary, who comes from an independent family, said she got involved in politics as a reaction to the former president.
“I came of age in 2016 when the election was happening, and then Trump won, and I saw the direct consequences of not caring about politics. Even when things seem scary, if you’re not going to truck through you can’t expect anyone else to,” she said. “My parents weren’t out campaigning for Democrats. It was seeing someone spewing the most hateful rhetoric and him getting to be the President of the United States.”
Youth vote in the news 🗞
It's easy to believe young voters could back Trump at young conservative conference, Elena Moore for NPR, 6/18
Meet the 24-year-old trying to solve Biden’s problems with young voters, Dylan Wells for The Washington Post, 6/15
An international headline…
Why Europe’s young people are voting far right, Nicholas Vinocur and Victor Goury-Laffont for POLITICO EU, 6/17
And case you missed it, I was on C-SPAN this weekend talking about The Up and Up and all things young voters. You can watch the full clip here, or see a snip-it below:
