Based on the latest news coverage, the primary concern among young voters appears to be the war in Gaza. Other issues like climate change, student debt, and reproductive rights come to mind as well.
However, it’s a mistake to infer from recent campus activism – and the subsequent surge in news coverage – that most young voters are similarly concerned.
According to recent polling from Harvard University, out of 16 issues presented to people between ages 18 to 29, inflation was the No. 1 issue, followed by healthcare, and housing.
The Gaza war ranked 15th.
Climate change came in 12th, student debt 16th, and reproductive rights 8th.
When asked to rate which issue was most important between inflation and the Gaza war, 76% chose inflation. In other paired match ups, the Gaza war outranked only free-speech and student debt.
These results showcase two important concepts essential for understanding mass politics.
First, when evaluating situations and making judgments people rely on information that comes to mind quickly. This makes judgments easier. Instead of a labor intensive search, judgments are made based on readily accessible information.
Psychologists label this the availability heuristic or availability bias.
Powerful visuals are particularly impactful.
For example, scenes of young people protesting on college campuses, clashing with police, and being escorted to jail leave an indelible imprint. The images are easily recalled and figure prominently when considering young people’s political concerns.
The images represent an unusual case, however, a narrow set of circumstances involving a bias sample of young people enrolled in highly selective universities.
In other words, images of recent protests are in fact memorable, they come to mind easily, but that does not mean they are representative of young people across the nation.
Consequently, available information can produce bad judgments.
As the representative data from the Harvard poll show, most young people do not prioritize the Gaza war. Economic issues cause them the most distress.
Second, to counteract the availability bias, and other information processing errors, consult opinion polls. Polling results are generally representative. That is, opinion surveys confer information about the entire population and subgroups within it.
Even long-time political observers can be led astray by vivid images. And when those images confirm a desired belief, people are even more prone to making poor judgments.
Bottom line
The passions of young college student activists may in time influence the priorities of young people across the nation.
But it’s just as likely that activist’s priorities circulate among a small group of engaged university students and never penetrate the much larger pool of young voters.
For example, the late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed massive anti-war demonstrations centered on college campuses. The protesters were young, ambitious, and liberal. Among other things, they argued if they were old enough to fight and die in Vietnam, they were old enough to vote.
Despite widespread expectations that the vast majority of young voters casting ballots for the first time in 1972 would tilt the electorate toward liberal anti-war candidate George McGovern, incumbent Republican president Richard Nixon captured nearly 50 percent of the 18-24 year-old vote, and 52% of voters under age 30.
Nixon resisted drawing broad conclusions from TV images of protests on select college campuses. Instead, he sought representative samples and discovered that non-college youth were supportive, and there were many more non-college youth than college youth voters.
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