Young voters who have registered tripled
DANBURY — The number of young voters who have registered since 2016 has tripled in Connecticut compared to four years ago — a sign of how deep the interest has reached in this year’s midterm elections.
More than 43,000 18to- 25- year- olds have registered to vote in Connecticut since Donald Trump was elected president — a 210 percent increase over the same 20 month period after the 2012 general election, according to the state Board of Elections.
Connecticut’s youth voter surge is due to increased interest in issues such as school safety and immigration, as well as dedicated campaigns to register youth voters, and recent changes that make registration easier.
“There has clearly been an increase in voter registration and interest in the lead- up to the 2018 midterm election, and there is no doubt that is true among Connecticut’s young voters,” Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said. “Our efforts to ensure that every eligible voter can register, and every registered voter votes are beginning to pay dividends.”
Newly registered voters such as Danbury’s Natalie Casanova agree.
“There are so many activist groups and marches led by young people that, now more than ever, we know what to do,” said Casanova, a 19- year- old volunteer for Democratic Fifth District Congressional candidate Mary Glassman, who plans to vote for the first time this year. “It’s easy to know what you have to do, because all you have to do is Google it.”
The tripling of newly registered young adults in Connecticut is not expected to have as large an effect on the Aug. 14 primaries as it could have on the November election for governor, Congress, and other races, because 56 percent of the new voters are not affiliated with a major party.
Even so, the number of young voters who have registered as Republicans represents a 241 percent increase over four years ago at 5,274, and the number of newly registered Democrats ages 18- to- 25 represents a 159 percent increase compared to the 20 months after the 2012 election, at 12,444.
“We’ve been all over college campuses in Connecticut and it’s true — everyone is talking about voter registration,” says J. R. Romano, the state GOP chairman.
The youth voter surge is part of a larger increase in voter registration in Connecticut since the 2016 election. Across all ages, newly registered Republicans are up 169 percent compared to the same midterm cycle four years ago, and newly registered Democrats are up 138 percent, according to the state’s latest figures.
Why the increase?
All the interest in a non- presidential election can be explained in two words, according to one political observer.
“It’s the Trump effect,” said Gary Rose, professor and chairman of Sacred Heart University’s Department of Government, Politics and Global Studies. “Politics is at a boiling point not just in Connecticut but across the country, and you have a president who is very polarizing.” Jaclyn Corin agrees. The 17- year- old is a co- founder of the March for Our Lives Movement, begun by students after the Valentine’s Day massacre of 17 students and staff at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — the deadliest school shooting in America since the 2012 shootings of 26 first- graders and educators at Sandy Hook School. Corin is participating in a tour to raise awareness about gun safety and encourage youth voter registration, which will conclude with an Aug. 12 event in Newtown.
“Young people are starting to see how government works, and how it affects them personally,” Corin said. “And they want to get involved before it is too late.”
Closer to home in Danbury, the League of Wom- en Voters of Northern Fairfield County has made youth voter registration its mission, making arrangements to speak with students at Western Connecticut State University and Naugatuck Valley Community College, and registering 250 student- aged voters over the past year, said Judy Griemsmann, president of the chapter.
Eden Edwards- Harris, 22, of New Milford, is a sociology major at WCSU and plans to vote for the first time this year.
” I’m African American, and my mother is always telling me ‘ We didn’t always have the right to go to school or to vote,’ ” Edwards- Harris said. ” I am very taken aback by what has happened in this country and I am definitely going to vote.”