Bethany Blonder and her friends lined up at the voter information table in the student union before organizers had even finished setting it up in time for lunch. It’s true that a fire drill had chased them there from their dorm on the campus of The College of New Jersey, or TCNJ. But the women were also quick to rattle off what they see as the existential issues that make them hell-bent on casting their ballots in the general election. Climate change, for instance. They exemplify the upward trend in college student voting and the underlying reasons for this uptick.

“All of our lives are at risk — our futures — and the lives of our neighbors, the lives of our friends,” said Blonder, a freshman from Ocean Township, New Jersey. “Every time there’s a hot day outside, I’m, like, is this what it will be like for the rest of my life?”

Americans ages 18 to 24 have historically voted in very low proportions — 15 to 20 percentage points below the rest of the population as recently as the presidential election years of 2008 and 2012, with an even bigger gap in the 2010 midterms, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But rates of college student voting have quietly been rising to unprecedented levels, despite their lifetimes of watching government gridlock and attempts in some states to make it harder for them to vote.

More than half of Americans ages 18 to 24 turned out for the 2020 general election, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That proportion was up by more than 8 percentage points from 2016, and has been closing in on the voting rate for adults of all ages. In terms of college student voting, the proportion who voted was even higher.

According to students themselves, college student voting is motivated by concerns that directly affect them, such as global warming, the economy, reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, student loan debt, and gun safety.

As early as elementary school, “we grew up having to learn about lockdowns” in response to mass shootings, said Andrew LoMonte, one of the students staffing the voter table. “What people are realizing is that the issues the candidates are talking about actually matter to us.”

Read the full article about college student voting by Jon Marcus at The Hechinger Report.