WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Jordan Vassallo is lukewarm about casting her first presidential bid for president Joe Biden in November. But when the 18-year-old senior at Jupiter High School in Florida thinks about the things she cares about, she says voting for the Democratic incumbent is an “obvious choice.”
Vassallo will vote for a constitutional amendment that would prevent the state of Florida from banning abortion before a fetus can survive on its own — essentially the standard that existed nationally before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down constitutional protections against abortion and rested the case. for states to decide.
Passing the amendment would wipe out Florida’s six-week abortion law, which Vassallo said makes no sense.
“Most people don’t know they’re pregnant at six weeks,” she said.
Biden, despite her reluctance, will also get her vote.
In Florida and across the country, voters in Vassallo’s age group could play a crucial role in the 2024 elections, from the presidency to ballot amendments and ballot measures that will determine who controls Congress. She is likely among the more than 8 million new voters eligible to vote in November since the 2022 election, according to the Tufts University Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
While some of these voters share Vassallo’s priorities on gun violence prevention and abortion rights, recent protests on college campuses over the war between Israel and Hamas, including on some campuses in Florida, have thrown a new element of uncertainty into the mix. In Florida and elsewhere, observers from across the political spectrum are watching with great interest.
Florida Democrats hope young voters will be driven to the polls by ballot measures legalizing marijuana and enshrining abortion rights. They hope that young voters’ more tolerant views on these issues will reverse the nearly 900,000 active voter registration advantage for Republicans in Florida, which in recent years has gone from the ultimate swing state in 2000 to a reliably Republican state.
According to AP VoteCast, a comprehensive survey of the electorate, about 8 in 10 Florida voters under the age of 45 in the 2022 midterm elections said the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade had an impact on their decision to vote and who to support. The youngest voters, under 30, seemed more likely than others to say that the decision was the single most important factor in their voting behavior; about 3 in 10 said so, compared with about 2 in 10 older voters.
Nathan Mitchell, chairman of the College Republicans at Florida Atlantic University, wonders what impact abortion will have in the election.
According to AP VoteCast, relatively few Florida voters during the 2022 midterm elections believed that abortion should be completely banned or completely allowed in all cases. Even among Republicans, only 12% said abortion should be illegal in all cases. About half of Republicans said it should be banned in most cases.
Voters under 45 were slightly more likely than others to believe that abortion should always be legal; 30% took that position.
Mitchell said that while abortion is a big issue, especially for women, he doesn’t think it will drive many younger voters to the polls.
“I think other amendments will probably do that, especially the recreational marijuana amendment,” Mitchell said. “I think this will bring in a lot more voters than abortion.”
The AP VoteCast survey lends some credibility to his thinking. About 6 in 10 Florida voters in the 2022 election supported legalizing recreational marijuana use nationwide, the survey found. This was 76% among voters under 45 years old. Still, it’s unclear how important this issue is to younger voters compared to other issues.
The big question is whether other issues can offset Biden’s enthusiasm problem among young voters in Florida and elsewhere.
Six in 10 adults under 30 nationally said in a December AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey that they would be dissatisfied with Biden as the Democratic Party’s 2024 nominee. And only about 2 in 10 said in a poll in March said they were “excited.” would describe their emotions if Biden were re-elected.
Young voters were crucial to the broad and racially diverse coalition that helped elect Biden in 2020. About 6 in 10 voters under the age of 30 supported Biden nationally, according to AP VoteCas. A Pew Research Center survey found that 38% of new or infrequent voters in that election were under 30 years old.
In Florida, Biden won 64% of young voters – similar to his national numbers.
This year, new issues have emerged that concern young voters. Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war has sparked protests on college campuses across the country, and Biden’s failure to achieve broad-based student loan forgiveness is directly impacting many young voters. Concerns about climate change also continue to increase. AP-NORC data from February shows that a majority of Americans under 30 disapprove of Biden’s handling of a range of issues, including the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, immigration, the economy, climate change and abortion policy.
But in Florida, it will be abortion rights and marijuana that give voters real control over issues beyond a presidential rematch that most didn’t want but got anyway, said Trevian Briskey, a 21-year-old FAU student.
Tony Figueroa, president of Miami Young Republicans, said the abortion issue is important to many young voters, regardless of where they stand. However, he noted that Florida “is a very conservative state.” That means some young voters motivated by the issue support stricter abortion laws.
“Given that Florida has become so much redder in recent years, it’s really more of a way to energize or mobilize young voters where this is an important issue to them,” Figueroa said. “It’s really a way to get them to come out en masse.”
Matheus Xavier, 21, who is studying biology at Florida Atlantic University, said he at one point considered voting for Trump but changed his mind as Biden became more aligned with the things he cares about, including preserving abortion rights.
“At the end of the day, you have to go with what you support,” he said. ‘I think Biden is showing more of that. If there was another option that was really good, I would probably choose that.”
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AP Director of Public Opinion Research Emily Swanson and staff writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
