WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Jordan Vassallo is nonchalant as he casts his first presidential vote for president Joe Biden in November. But when the 18-year-old senior at Jupiter High School in Florida thinks about the things that interest her, she says her vote for the Democratic candidate is an “obvious choice.”
Vassallo will vote for a constitutional amendment that would prevent the state of Florida from banning abortions before the fetus can survive on its own — essentially the standard that existed nationally before the U.S. Supreme Court. struck down constitutional protections to abortion and left the issue for the states to decide.
Passage of the amendment would eliminate Florida’s six-week abortion law, which Vassallo says makes no sense.
“Most people don’t know they’re pregnant at six weeks,” she said.
Biden, despite his reticence, will also have your vote.
In Florida and across the country, voters in Vassallo’s age group could prove crucial in the 2024 elections, from the presidency to electoral changes and the electoral contests that will determine who controls Congress. She is likely to be among the more than 8 million new voters eligible to vote in November since the 2022 election, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.
While some of these voters share Vassallo’s priorities on preventing gun violence and abortion rights, recent protests on college campuses over the war between Israel and Hamas, including on some Florida campuses, have added a new element of uncertainty to the mix. . In Florida and elsewhere, observers across the political spectrum are watching the situation with intense interest.
Florida Democrats hope young voters will be driven to the polls through election amendments that legalize marijuana and enshrine the right to abortion. They hope young voters’ more tolerant views on these issues will reverse the nearly 900,000 active voter registration margin for Republicans in Florida, which went from being the last swing state in 2000 to becoming reliably Republican in recent years.
According to AP Voting, a broad survey of the electorate, about 8 in 10 Florida voters under age 45 in the 2022 midterm elections said the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade Wade had an impact on his decision to vote and who to support. Younger voters, under 30, seemed more likely than others to say the decision was the most important factor in their vote, with about 3 in 10 saying this, compared with about 2 in 10 older voters.
Nathan Mitchell, president of the College Republicans at Florida Atlantic University, questions the impact abortion will have on elections.
According to AP VoteCast, relatively few Florida voters in the 2022 midterm elections believed that abortion should be completely banned or completely permitted in all cases. Even among Republicans, only 12% said abortion should be illegal in all cases. About half of Republicans said it should be banned in most cases.
Voters under 45 were slightly more likely than others to say abortion should always be legal, with 30% taking that position.
Mitchell said that while abortion is a strong issue, especially for women, he doesn’t think it will drive many younger voters to the polls.
“I think other amendments will probably do that, especially the recreational marijuana amendment,” Mitchell said. “I think this will attract a lot more voters than abortion.”
The AP VoteCast poll lends some credence to his thinking. About 6 in 10 Florida voters in the 2022 election favored legalizing recreational marijuana use nationwide, the poll found. Among voters under 45, that number was 76%. Still, it’s unclear how important this issue is to younger voters compared to other issues.
The big question is whether other issues can overcome the problem of Biden’s enthusiasm among young voters in Florida and elsewhere.
Six in 10 adults under age 30 nationwide said in a December poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that they would be dissatisfied with Biden as the Democratic Party candidate in 2024. And only about 2 in 10 said in a March poll that “excited” would describe his emotions if Biden were reelected.
Young voters were crucial to the broad and racially diverse coalition who helped elect Biden in 2020. About 6 in 10 voters under 30 supported Biden nationally, according to AP VoteCas. A Pew Research Center The survey showed that those under 30 represented 38% of new or irregular voters in that election.
In Florida, Biden won 64% of young voters – similar to his national numbers.
New issues that concern young voters have emerged this year. Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas has sparked protests on college campuses across the country, and Biden’s failure to grant broad student loan forgiveness directly impacts many young voters. Concern about climate change also continues to grow. February AP-NORC data shows that a majority of Americans under 30 disapprove of Biden’s handling of a range of issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, immigration, the economy, climate change and abortion policy.
But in Florida, it will be abortion rights and marijuana that give voters real control over issues beyond a presidential rematch that most didn’t want but got anyway, said Trevian Briskey, a 21-year-old FAU student.
Tony Figueroa, president of the Miami Young Republicans, said the abortion issue is important to many young voters, regardless of their position. He noted, however, that Florida “is a very conservative state.” This means that some of the young voters motivated by the issue are in favor of stricter abortion laws.
“Considering how much redder Florida has become in the last two years, it’s actually more of a way to galvanize or mobilize young voters where this is an important issue for them,” Figueroa said. “It’s really a way to get them to show up en masse.”
Matheus Xavier, 21, who studies biology at Florida Atlantic University, said he at one point considered voting for Trump but changed his mind because Biden aligned himself more with the things he cares about, including preserving the right to abortion.
“At the end of the day, you have to follow what you support,” he said. “I think Biden shows more of that. If there was another option that was really good, I would probably choose that one.”
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AP Director of Public Opinion Research Emily Swanson and Staff Writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
