Ask the two dozen students in Diba Khan-Bureau’s environmental research project class at Three Rivers Community College in Norwich who is registered to vote, and all hands go up. A third to one-half say they’ll be voting for the first time in November.
It gets more complicated after that.
Ask if they’ll vote based on climate issues — this is a class dealing with matters directly linked to climate change, after all — and no hands go up. They clarify that climate is an issue, but so is women’s reproductive rights (which garners some cheering), gender rights and gun control, the Middle East conflicts and the economy.
The students had just finished hearing from Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, and their questions ran the gamut from offshore wind to nuclear power to agriculture to government in general.
“I would say my bigger concern is the government as a whole, lobby-ism, bloated bureaucracy. That’s why I asked him about bipartisanship,” said Ethan Itchkawich, 30 and not a first-time voter. “I think the bogging down of the governmental system is a bigger issue that kind of contains all those other things inside of it.”
First-time voter Eva Patnoad is at the other end of the spectrum.
“I personally don’t feel comfortable voting for anyone who is pushing for more oil drilling,” she said. “I want to vote third party Green, because I know that I feel comfortable voting for them, knowing that they’re not taking money from the corporations to push these things.”
Dusk Homiski, a second-time presidential voter, who uses they/them pronouns was of two minds over how environmental considerations fit into their voting.
“On the one hand, I don’t really think that either of the major parties are doing enough to put environmentalism to the front,” they said. “On the other hand, there are a lot of political issues that are putting people at personal risk on a day-to-day basis. When you have things like a former president advocating racist conspiracy theories on a national platform and legislation that puts a lot of people at direct risk, it’s hard to be a single-issue voter when those things are going on.”
Such mixed messages on how climate change registers as a voting issue for the nation’s youngest voters are borne out in a number of surveys and polls in the state, region and nation. Broadly, climate change is a matter of great concern, even pervasive anxiety, among young people. But the biggest factor in their voting? Not so much.
What the data shows
“Young people’s top issue very, very consistently is the economy,” said Sara Suzuki, a senior researcher with the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, CIRCLE, a non-partisan independent research organization at Tufts University that focuses on youth civic engagement, with a big emphasis on elections. After the economy comes a group of social issues, Suzuki said. “Climate change is always in there. It’s up there with gun violence, abortion. They sort of switch around depending on what’s happening.”
One doesn’t zero out another. In fact, she said, young voters are very good at what she termed “intersectionality” — “they are seeing issues as a constellation of related matters.”
Data on how young Connecticut voters view climate change as an election issue is hard to come by, given the state’s non-swing-state status. But polling conducted for The Connecticut Mirror by the MassINC Polling Group from Sept. 12 to 18 provides a tiny hint.
To the question of “which issues matter to you the most,” 42% of likely voters cited climate change. That was third from the bottom among 16 issues and well behind the top ones: economy and jobs at 66%, the future of democracy at 60%, immigration at 54% and gun policy at 51%.
When broken into age categories, the oldest age group — those 60 and older — cared slightly more about climate change at 46% than the youngest age group of 18 to 29, at 43%.
But climate and its predecessor category of “environment” have a history of being issues people care about yet don’t generally base their votes on.
A recent national youth survey by Sacred Heart University’s new Institute for Sustainability & Social Justice and GreatBlue Research sheds a little light on that.
The study determined that nearly three-quarters of U.S. youths ages 15 to 29 are personally worried about climate change. Fifty-five percent experience eco-anxiety that causes enough psychological distress to affect their daily lives. Broken out by region, the Northeast also comes in at 55%.
But only around 36% of U.S. youths said they would take action in the next six months by voting for candidates who support their positions on issues of sustainability, social justice and/or climate change. Northeastern youth came in at the lowest level — 34%.
Eighty percent of youths in the Northeast believe individuals should take a lot of or some action to tackle climate change, the highest among the four regions. At the same time, youths broadly said taking individual action on climate change has limited to no effect. The Northeast ranked highest in that sentiment at 61%.
The survey also revealed that the main barrier youths had to taking climate action was limited financial resources. The second reason was lack of knowledge about to how to take such action. Third was the feeling that individual actions won’t make a difference.
“It points to a lack of understanding of the power of collective action, and how large groups of individuals acting together, collectively, like in voting, can really drive positive change,” said Kirk Bartholomew, the report’s co-author and development director of the Institute.
Also contributing to that knowledge gap is the reality that young voters are sometimes just uninformed.
CIRCLE’s research, done late last year, shows there’s an activist segment among youth who are informed, but it’s very small.
CIRCLE’s Suzuki said the largest group, about 40% of the sample , are aware of the crisis that climate change is causing and the threats from it. And they want the government to take action.
“But these young people are really disconnected from information that lets them know what government is doing about climate,” she said. “They were really, really uninformed about what Biden has done on climate.”
Not knowing about the Inflation Reduction Act and the climate actions in it means they don’t have the information to make ballot choices or take other kinds of political engagement actions on climate. “Untapped potential” is what CIRCLE calls it.
“It’s astonishing,” Suzuki said. “We directly asked ‘Do you know about this bill and the climate pieces?’ And they’re like, ‘Nope, never heard of it.’”
Witness Khan-Bureau’s class, where climate change is part of the backbone.
First-time voter Jack Barnett said he thought presidential candidates were only focusing on short-term climate fixes.
“So while I’m definitely concerned about the environment, I just I don’t see anything changing majorly anytime soon,” he said.
Asked about the firehose of Biden administration climate policy as part of, and separate, from the IRA: “To be honest, I haven’t been really up to date with the recent policy, because I try to stay out of politics,” he said. “I find it — what’s the word — tiring.”
But he won’t stay home, he said. He’ll vote.
Youth registration
CIRCLE has also been tracking voter registration among young voters in 34 states that are providing data. Their latest information — registrations as of Sept. 3 compared with registrations on Election Eay 2020 — shows Connecticut among the lowest. Registrations are down nearly 18.5% among 18- to 29-year-olds and down more than 38% among 18- and 19-year-olds.
Of course, 18- and 19 year-olds are newly eligible voters coming in as the high end of the group ages out, so both categories are in perpetual flux. Even so, eight states are already above their 2020 totals for 18- to 29-year-olds, and two are above their 2020 totals for the newest voters. In 2020, young voters, with a record 50% turnout, were widely credited with helping Joe Biden win.
In some cases, automatic voter registration seems to be the driver, which Connecticut does have. Same-day voter registration can also suppress advance registration. Connecticut has that too, though it’s a restricted system.
“Young people are very last minute. Same-day registration studies have shown they specifically help youth voter turnout,” Suzuki said. Overall, she said of Connecticut, “I’m seeing lukewarm concerted efforts that target youth registration, and I think that’s what translates into those low numbers.”
One effort in Connecticut is for the first time placing a voting location on the University of Connecticut campus at Storrs. That location is open for early voting.
Courtney told the Three Rivers students he’s pushed for that for years.
“Low voter turnout really is dangerous, in my opinion,” he told them, explaining that he thinks it feeds the big ideological swings and polarization that exist now. “When you widen the pie of those voting, the outcome is more stable.”
The assumption is that a bigger youth vote will help Kamala Harris. And Harvard recently released a Youth Poll, which it has run usually twice a year since 2000, shows Harris with a 31 percentage point lead over Donald Trump among likely 18- to 29-year-old voters.
And on a list of 13 issues looking at who is more trusted to deal with them, Harris’ biggest lead over Trump comes on climate change: 32 percentage points among all 18- to 29-year-olds, 38 percentage points among registered voters, and a 45-percentage-point margin among likely voters.
The other side of the aisle
But at American Conservation Coalition Action, it will take more than that to convince them climate change isn’t an issue that motivates young conservative voters.
“There is a conservative path forward on climate,” said Karly Matthews, vice president of communication for the organization, which is the sister political arm to the educational nonprofit American Conservation Coalition.
ACC ACT’s own polling, released at the beginning of the month, underscored that “not engaging on climate is far more of a liability for Republicans than engaging on it, with 44% of independents more likely to support a candidate with a plan to address climate change, while only 7% are less likely.”
The group points to a University of Colorado study that indicates Republicans are losing half a percentage point of the popular vote each year by not engaging on climate.
Republicans need to stress the economic opportunity of using climate to create companies and jobs, Matthews said. And there’s always the reminder that it was Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican president, who put conservation on the map.
“We talk to students who grew up hunting. They grew up perhaps on a farm. They grew up in a rural area, and really have that passion for environmental conservation and leaving the world better than they found it. So I think there’s just that inherent stewardship and conservation ethos,” Matthews said. “Climate is almost like a signal to young people that you care about their future, and you care about investing in the next generation and ensuring that they have the same environmental opportunities that prior generations have had.”
Climate might not be the ultimate reason they vote one way or the other, she said. “But it’s certainly a factor in whether or not a candidate is seen as viable.”
Back at the Three Rivers class, the message on climate and voting choice is similar — in some cases it is the ultimate reason, but not always.
“I can’t take anyone seriously when it comes to the environment if they push war, because that destroys the environment,” said Mason Romanowski, a first-time voter who gets a round of applause for his statement.
But his classmate Kali Cheetham, also voting for the first time, sees more room for compromise.
“To me, it’s basically voting for the lesser of two evils,” she said. “Both sides have their problems, but one side has significantly more, which will harm more people, including issues with the environment.”
And from Dusk Homiski, who was of two minds of environment and their voting choice: “I’m not really satisfied with either of the major parties’ contributions to the issue of climate change,” they said. “I’m going to vote to minimize the harm that’s done to the planet and its people, but I’m not going to be thrilled with the options that are presented for that. Making the best of a bad situation, I guess, is how I would describe it.”
But stay home?
“No, no. Absolutely not,” they said.
This story was originally published in the Connecticut Mirror Oct. 13, 2024.
