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that could greatly impact and decide these toss-up elections. Students who move out of state for college face the decision of where to register to vote, choosing either their college or home address. Gwyn Chilcoat, a student of William’s College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, was a college voter in 2020 with a strategic voting plan. Chilcoat is originally from Des Moines, Iowa. When thinking about her plan for where to vote in 2020, Chilcoat believed that the decision to vote in Iowa was an easy choice for her. “Because A, I am spending most of this year in Iowa anyways, and B, … Massachusetts is a very blue state and Iowa is very much a swing state, so [as a Democratic voter] my vote ‘counts more’,” Chilcoat said. Even though Iowa has less electoral votes, she still wanted the opportunity to participate in the 2020 Democratic caucuses. Chilcoat further discussed her personal experiences with other college voters' strategic voting patterns. Before the 2020 election, she noticed that college voters seemed to especially be educating themselves due to the agreed-upon importance of the election. “I think it is really important to at least do some preliminary research to see where each state tends to lean and how that compares relative to how you're going to vote,” Chilcoat said. While the impact of the election is ultimately up to the voters, it is important to address how campaigns and organizers have aided in this idea of strategic youth voting. Isha Kahlia, formerly an intern for the Abby Finkenauer campaign, described the tactics used by the campaign to further motivate young voters.
“We did a lot of text banking,” Kahlia said. “I think that is one [strategy] where we had a lot of youth involvement because a lot of young people, we noticed, don’t pick up the phone if they don’t know who it is.” Kahlia noted how social media is influential in motivating young people because many candidates are active on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. To her, the use of social media by the young people on the candidate’s campaign was able to further expand the youth vote network. During his time as the youth director for the Elizabeth Warren Iowa Caucuses campaign, Trenton Seubert analyzed the team’s focus on college campuses. Seubert highlighted delegating campus influencers who were able to make personal connections with students. The relational organizing method on campuses had the potential to swing outof-state college voters to decide to vote from their college town. “We wanted to get a lot of people who had some clout and just had networks on campuses to really invest into Elizabeth and have conversations,” Seubert said. Furthermore, Seubert called attention to discrepancies in the voting process that might be present between college and hometown states. He described all the small things that may be overlooked by college students in the registration and voting processes, such as how to vote, when to vote, or how varying ID requirements add to the complication of voting for college students. “Those little small things add up,” Seubert said. “It holds (college voters) back from being able to vote. They do care, it’s just there are all these small things, with jobs, with life, with school, that add up.”
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THEY DO CARE, IT’S JUST THERE ARE ALL THESE SMALL THINGS, WITH JOBS, WITH LIFE, WITH SCHOOL, THAT ADD UP.
TRENTON SEUBERT, WARREN CAMPAIGN YOUTH DIRECTOR
Alluded to by many was the lack of voter education aimed at college students who can so drastically impact an election. This election, however, it was clear that campaigns, organizations, and many college voters themselves were making an effort to further push information on voting options. Following the results of the 2020 election, Tish College at Tufts University in Massachusetts concluded that youth voter turnout was on track to beat that of 2016 from their exit polls of 11 battleground states. The results of the 2020 general election were about as chaotic as expected. But, with the stakes high, people did turn out to vote. College voters no doubt played an instrumental role in the victory of Joe Biden. Leading up to any election, college voters face many options in the voting process. As young individuals become more involved and interested in social issues, and depending on heavily contested elections, more strategic voting will be invoked by college voters.
DRAKE POLITICAL REVIEW
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