Will a historically apathetic group show up to the polls?

Young voters could sway the outcome of this month’s midterm elections in favor of Democrats — if they vote.

They usually don’t.

Generally apathetic to elections anyway, young people show particular disinterest in contests that focus on local politics and community issues rather than choosing who will be president.

“It’s a substantial difference, and it’s a difference in recent years that has tended to hurt Democrats,” said Mershon affiliate Paul Beck, an emeritus professor of political science at Ohio State and co-coordinator of the Comparative National Elections Project.

In 2012 and 2016, slightly more than 40 percent of eligible voters aged 18 to 24 showed up to the polls, Beck said. In 2014, during an election that led to the largest Republican majority in the House of Representatives in nearly a century, just 17 percent in the 18- to 24-year-old group voted.

The low turnout doesn’t always hurt the Democrats — the GOP carried the youth vote in the 1980s — but it has in recent elections, Beck said. It’s why you may be seeing an increase in Democrat-run voter registration drives at places such as high schools and college campuses.

When young people don’t vote, it can be because they are unfamiliar with how to register; or they’re registered somewhere other than where they attend college or move for a first job, Beck said. Often, they’re simply more focused on their lives and their friends than on politics.

But those who don’t vote may ultimately hurt themselves: Politicians are more likely to pay attention to those who elect them, which can mean that senior citizen benefits take priority over, say, student loan initiatives.

“If you think about it, if you’re an elected politician, you think, ‘I have all these demands to do X and X  — I’m going to respond to the demands that affect those who vote,’” Beck said. “It is perfectly reasonable, and it’s why older voters pretty much get taken care of.”

While he can’t predict whether young voter turnout during this midterm election will be different, Beck said it’s possible. Last week, The Columbus Dispatch reported a notable increase in one Ohio district: 

More than 10,000 young people who reside in the hotly contested 12th Congressional District have registered to vote just since mid-February, when the nation’s worst high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, triggered high school and college walkouts and student-registration drives, according to a Dispatch analysis of state voter records.

“I think there will be a higher turnout rate among young people this year,” Beck said. “They’re just more energized.”

This article first appeared in Ohio State Insights.