Young Voices Largely Missing in Election Coverage

Harvard’s Institute of Politics (10/26/20) reported last week that 63% of  respondents aged 18–29 said they will “definitely be voting,” highlighting the “contrast to 47% during this same time in 2016.” Despite this increase of young people planning to vote, corporate media have largely forgotten about them in the weeks leading up to the election.

Corporate media mentioned young voters in March, when Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the presidential race, and in April, when stay-at-home orders were enacted, but coverage of youth voters has had little attention from the media recently, even as young people are more determined to vote. Young people are an increasingly large part of our electorate, but we don’t often hear about them.

Most of the coverage surrounding young voters this election cycle centers around the struggles of voting during the coronavirus pandemic for college students, why young people don’t vote, or the ways that politicians are trying to connect with younger generations. There is one unfortunate commonality throughout these stories: We hear about young people, but we rarely hear from them.

Take the New York Times’ coverage, for instance. From March 1 to October 26, 65 articles contain the phrase “young voters.” The issue? Forty-four of those articles are from March 1 to July 1. Since the beginning of July, only 21 articles have used the phrase “young voters.” What’s worse than mentions of young voters being cut in half is that most of those 65 articles are not actually about young voters’ perspectives, or young voters at all.

Only 16 of those 65 articles discuss young voters in any meaningful way. Twelve of those are from March 1 to July 1, and four are from July 1 to October 26. So while the mention of young voters has been cut in half since March, meaningful discussion of them has been cut to a third of what it was earlier this year.

A New York Times piece (10/8/20) on why young people don’t vote doesn’t quote any young non-voters.

There were a few good stories about young perspectives by the Times (e.g., 6/6/20, 8/3/20), but they were few and far between. Rarely in the coverage were young people quoted directly who were not already in the political world, whose main political identity is “voter.”

The Times’ “College Students Aren’t on Campus. Their Missing Votes Could Make a Difference” (10/20/20) quotes US Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a city clerk, a Michigan State University spokesperson, the editor of an election newsletter, the president of Rock the Vote and the House editor of the Cook Political Report. Only one student is quoted, amounting to 20 words in the 1,600-word piece.

An earlier Times article (10/8/20) asks why young people don’t vote, and what can be done about it. Reporter Alexandria Symonds talked to a slew of authors, researchers, directors, professors and doctoral candidates, but no young non-voters, even as she asked the experts quoted for solutions.

A Washington Post story (10/5/20) covered the college voting issue with significantly more consideration toward younger voters than the New York Times pieces. The Post’s Michelle Ye Hee Lee quotes six students from across the US. And unlike the Times articles, we hear from young people and their thoughts about a voting situation that uniquely impacts them. The three experts that the Post quotes do not dominate the article, and Lee highlights specific actions of the  young voters themselves, such as how “younger voters are flooding social media with videos about how to check a voter registration and cast a ballot by mail.”

The Washington Post (10/21/20) reported that Ocasio-Cortez livestreamed a videogame on Twitch “as part of an effort to encourage young voters to register and get to the polls.” Were any young voters encouraged? The Post doesn’t seem to have asked any.

In two Post articles (10/21/20, 10/22/20) on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent Twitch stream, however, the Post quotes Rep. Josh Harder, activist Jordan Uhl, two CEOs, a professor, Ocasio-Cortez, and the streamers who played alongside her, but no “average” young people who watched, even as the Post notes that the stream was in the spirit of harnessing the power of youth voting:

The stream reflects an increasing understanding by politicians and political consultants, especially on the left, that video games and the streaming platform Twitch are among the most engaging entertainment venues for younger voters. AOC’s stream comes shortly after Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign created an island in another popular game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and streaming a live tour on Twitch.

As of October 26, Ocasio-Cortez’s stream has garnered just under 5.4 million views; were none of the young people in that 5 million available for an interview?

The Post’s coverage (10/16/20) of the Biden/Harris campaign’s Animal Crossing island also lacked input from young voters, or any indication of Gen Z or Millennial outreach, while the Times article (9/1/20) on the topic only discussed the impact on young voters in one paragraph, despite that impact being the point of the effort.

Politico’s “Gen Z Rising” series has covered younger voters in their words more directly than most traditional media coverage. While not perfect, “Six Things to Know About Gen Z, Politics and 2020” (10/11/20) and “Anti-Trump, but Not Fully for Biden: Will Gen Z Vote?” (10/11/20), two articles in the series, provide valuable insight into the minds of over 1,000 Gen Z voters, backed by data and experts, but also with a plethora of direct quotations from Gen Z themselves.

This isn’t to say that any reporter needs to talk to over 1,000 young people in order to give their views justice, or even 10. But what we’re mostly hearing in the media now from young voters is silence.

Featured image: Politico illustration for its “Gen Z Rising” report.