According to a recent poll by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, young Americans who grew up in a time of mass shootings are worried about the future and nearly half say they’ve felt unsafe recently.
Why it matters: According to John Della Volpe, the institute’s director of polling, these concerns are encouraging young people to vote in nearly record numbers.
As an illustration, NPR reports that the 2022 midterm elections saw the second-highest turnout of voters under 30 (27%) in at least the previous three decades.
“It’s a critical voting bloc,” Della Volpe says.
And it continues to tilt the scales in favor of Democratic candidates — whom young people overwhelmingly support.
Young voters’ influence “enabled the Democrats to win almost every battleground statewide contest and increase their majority in the U.S. Senate,” Brookings Institution analysts write.
By the numbers: A stunning 48% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 say they’ve felt unsafe recently, the Harvard poll found (2,069 people; margin of error: ±2.86 points).
21% say they’ve felt unsafe at school. And 40% are concerned about being victims of gun violence or a mass shooting.
They’re also worried about the state of the economy.
73% believe that homelessness could happen to anyone, and 32% fear they could one day be homeless.
