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Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome back to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. In recent elections, young voters have been making their voices heard and their preferences known. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE, at Tufts University, in 2016, about 39% of young people cast a ballot but two years later in 2018, they broke records with the highest midterm youth turnout in history. Two years later, fully half of eligible young Americans cast a ballot aided in large part by the availability of absentee and mail-in voting options.
With just two weeks left to vote this year, we wanted to know if young people are coming back to the polls, and if so, what issues are driving them there? Here with me is Versha Sharma, the editor in Chief of Teen Vogue. Versha, tanks so much for joining me.
Versha Sharma: Hi Melissa. Thank you so much for having me.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Teen Vogue is partnered with CHange Research on a series of polls called, y'all call them Midterms Vibe Check. What are the vibe checks telling you?
Versha Sharma: That's right. We've done two rounds of polling. The most recently was just in early October. Our first one was in May. What we're finding is that young people are number one, very much paying attention to what's going on in politics and policy right now. I believe just to your recent point, we think we're on track to possibly set another record for voter turnout in this midterm election because they're engaged, they're fired up, especially about issues like abortion and climate change. I think they've already been participating in quite a lot of early voting. We're looking at seeing those trends continue through election day.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm interested when you say they're paying attention, where are they getting their information? One thing we have really seen across generational differences is the difference between being a newspaper reader, a cable news watcher, or getting your information from other more digital sources.
Versha Sharma: It's absolutely online news, digital media, social media. We know the vast majority of young people are consuming news on their phones. It's all on mobile and the vast majority of the time that they spend on their phones is on social platforms. We are talking YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter as well.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, when you say that questions of reproductive rights, abortion are crucial, is it crucial in all in one direction? Is it all in a pro-choice direction or do we have pro-life young people also showing up to say, "I want to be sure that we extend this Dobbs decision?"
Versha Sharma: There are pro-life young voters, but again, the majority of young voters that we've polled under 35 are pro-choice. They are extremely worried about abortion access, about contraception access. They know that it is going to directly affect them. We've even polled young people who say it will affect where they go to college because abortion may be now legal or illegal in their state. We know that it's affecting the decisions that they're making in their everyday lives for sure.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, one of the things I find fascinating about these vibe checks is that in True Teen Vogue style, you all have worked to even frame the language of the questions in more millennial and Gen Z language. Can you say a bit about that?
Versha Sharma: Yes, absolutely. That's one thing that I think politicians and some campaigns maybe still need to take a leaf out of that book, which is communicating to young people in a way that makes sense to them and in a way that's accessible, not talking down to them either because I think one thing that we do at Teen Vogue is we never underestimate the intelligence of our audience. Of course, the name of this partnership, our midterm vibe check for sure, and unfortunately, as we said in our initial round of polling in May, we know that young people know the vibes are off in this country, that we're going in the wrong direction. The majority of them believe that as well.
We also like to use perhaps meme language or other social media language to communicate or ask some questions as well. I think actually one of the most interesting questions that we asked was about dating. The way that we phrased the question was, "They are a 10 but--" Then we left it blank and filled it in with a number of options and discovered if they identify as a MAGA republican, democratic women are not interested, which is not surprising, but we had a number of fill-ins there that I think were pretty interesting.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I also just love the open format in general. It is harder to code, there's no doubt about it for survey researchers, but it also provides space, especially when you're talking about generational differences, for younger voters to be able to put issues and items on the agenda that maybe we're not even thinking to ask about.
Versha Sharma: Absolutely. I think one of the most interesting things also is not just talking about where they're getting their news, but what's actually breaking through. What are they hearing about? We found that 97% of the voters that we polled, of course, had heard about this US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The second highest news story they had heard about was about the Biden administration forgiving $10,000 in federal student loan debt. Again, something that of course we know directly affects their lives. The news story that we asked about that they had heard the least about was about The For The People Act that was passed in the house, which was an anti-corruption and voter protection bill.
It's also interesting to know what is actually breaking through the noise and what are they hearing about.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Absolutely. In that, also directing campaigns on both sides to think about how they are communicating. I'm interested as well in the extraordinary increase from 2016 to 2020, an 11-point jump for young voters, and just to be clear young voters here are 35 and under, is critical. We know that that has largely been because of not only communicating but making available more ways to vote. You don't have to vote on Tuesday when you might be in class or when you're taking care of a young child or maybe working at an entry-level job. I'm wondering if young people in your vibe checks have said anything about the protection of democracy or the extension of the franchise.
Versha Sharma: Yes, they absolutely have. Again, a majority of them are concerned about the future of democracy in America. A lot of them are very clear-eyed about what will happen if Republicans gain control of Congress in this midterm election. Again, number one, the number one most likely thing that young voters believe will happen if the GOP gains control of Congress is that they will obstruct investigations into January 6th and pardon insurrectionists. The second, which is like a close tie, is that they believe the GOP will pass a national ban on abortion, which again, we already know that they've been talking about.
A majority of these young voters are both clear-eyed about that threat to democracy, and they're also extremely worried about it. Again, I think that goes back to the idea that they are motivated to vote in this election because they know what will happen if they don't.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Versha, if you had to sum up the key takeaways from your vibe checks going into these last two weeks in, say, memish language or in a 140-character tweet, how would you characterize it?
Versha Sharma: I would actually say vibes for the Democrats among young voters are better than they were from five months ago with our initial round of polling. We know that the accomplishments of Biden and the Democrats in Congress are popular with young voters. I think that's a momentum that perhaps those campaigns want to take advantage of and pay attention to going into these final weeks of voting.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Versha Sharma is the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue. Thank you again for taking the time.
Versha Sharma: Thank you so much.
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