What we learned at the 2024 State of the Student Vote Workshop
Dozens of student vote researchers and practitioners came together on April 3 to reflect on two years of research projects and assess a changing student vote landscape
The Student Vote Research Network’s third annual gathering showcased a space that has already evolved through multiple iterations in the past two years—and is poised to do so again in 2024. The network’s third annual workshop featured presentations from 2022 and 2023 SVRN subgrant recipients as well as several presentations and discussions that spoke to issues likely to define the nonpartisan student voter engagement space going into the 2024 election and beyond.
Future substack posts from 2023 subgrant recipients will explore their research in depth (and check out our archive to find posts from our 2022 recipients!), so for the purposes of this article we’ll explore some of the broader themes that arose earlier this month in Chicago:
Issues and emotions may be the keys to student voter motivation in 2024
The afternoon began and ended with presentations focused on how student attitudes and behaviors are changing. After presenting their findings about students as knowledge brokers (more on that later), Dr. Maricruz Osorio of Bentley University and Dr. Stephanie DeMora of the University of Pennsylvania ended their opening presentation with results from a recent randomized control trial (RCT) that tested how evoking various emotions changes reported interest in participating in elections.
Overall, they found students are strongly motivated by linked fate—the idea that their future is affected by the fate of others of their generation. They are strongly motivated to register to vote when primed to think about loss and with negative emotions like fear but are also strongly motivated to engage in politics when primed with positive emotions like joy.
Later in the afternoon, Professor Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin of Columbia College Chicago shared her insights into how today’s students are feeling increasingly disillusioned and discouraged about politics, and that she has found that deep listening strategies can turn that apathy into increased motivation. Earlier this year, Bloyd-Peshkin noticed that students were more resistant to traditional classroom presentations about registering and voting compared to previous election cycles.
Bloyd-Peshkin now trains students to start presentations with deep listening—asking students what they care about and what they’re doing about it. And students do care about political issues, especially about reproductive rights, racial justice, climate change, and LGBTQ rights. Conversations can then turn to how students can have more influence on those issues, including which level of government controls them and why voting can make a difference.
The classroom is a vital venue for student voter engagement
2022 subgrantees Dr. Leah Sweetman and Dr. Sabrina Tyuse of Saint Louis University emphasized the importance and opportunity of exposing students to information about the voting process in the classroom during their presentations—a notion that was reinforced by 2023 subgrantees Dr. Jennifer Victor and Tim Bynion of George Mason University, who found that face-to-face classroom presentations from student peers remain a powerful method of increasing student engagement at traditional, residential universities. Dr. Diane McMahon, Dr. Lex Merrill, and Dr. Devon Merrill of Allegany College of Maryland shared their findings on the power of randomized exposure to a democracy module to online students, with a focus on students not particularly interested in politics (e.g., nursing students). Their research may lay out a path for the expansion of classroom-based voter engagement beyond the physical limits of the classroom itself.
Later in the afternoon, during a breakout discussion on how to build on data generated by campus democratic engagement action planning led by ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge Executive Director Jen Domagal-Goldman and University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement Chief Strategist Sam Novey, various campus practitioners emphasized the importance of the classroom as a venue for both introducing and reinforcing concepts of civic engagement to a “captive audience.”
The community-to-campus engagement pipeline is a two-way street
During a second afternoon breakout session led by Students Learn Students Vote Coalition Co-Founder and Executive Director Clarissa Unger, participants discussed how nonprofit organizations can better support nonpartisan voter engagement efforts, including and especially at community colleges, where students have unique civic strengths but also face different psychological and other barriers to participating in elections as an older student body that often carries multiple identities and responsibilities beyond being a student.
When paired with Osorio and DeMora’s focus-group based research on the role of students as knowledge-brokers in their communities, the afternoon’s programming offered a glimpse into how outside entities’ involvement with campus civic engagement efforts may evolve going forward. Osorio and DeMora shared evidence that efforts to motivate students to vote have spillover effects into their homes and neighborhoods, especially for first-generation college students.
Further understanding the interplay between students of all kinds, and the communities and families they belong to outside of school, could unlock new strategies for tapping into and amplifying students’ strengths as civic actors and leaders.
Where does the Student Vote Research Network go from here?
The 2024 State of the Student Vote Workshop ended with three breakout sessions that each explored a fundamental question about the future direction of the SVRN. (Editor’s note: If you’re interested in exploring any of these questions, or know someone who might be, contact information for each session breakout lead is listed below each summary!)
1) Given data from campus action plans and related surveys as well as emerging evidence of the role action planning plays in campus strategic capacity, what other analysis and/or questions should the field be doing/asking and how else can student vote researchers build on this data?
This breakout, led by Dr. Jen Domagal-Goldman of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, explored the challenges of crafting consistently effective nonpartisan democratic engagement tactics in a political environment that is ever-changing. Among the areas participants cited as needing further research were the role of part-time faculty in student voter engagement, the ideal use of the classroom as a venue for voter engagement, what successful engagement with local election officials looks like, and how to aid student voters in navigating their own ambivalence, as well as an environment ripe with mis- and disinformation. (Editor’s note: If you are interested in further exploring this question, please contact Jen Domagal-Goldman at jen.domagal-goldman@civicnation.org)!
2) What are the relationships between student civic outcomes (voter turnout, registration, public testimony, protesting) and traditional higher education student success measures (degree completion, on-time graduation, etc.)?
This breakout, led by Kassie Phebillo of the Fair Elections Center's Campus Vote Project, explored potential research focused on traditional higher education measures of success for politically-active college students. On a broader scale, the breakout participants agreed that a long-term goal would be a longitudinal randomized controlled trial featuring a treatment of voting information with an activity to participate politically as part of a first-year course. Outcome measures would include retention and six-year graduation rates. A number of smaller-scale ideas concerning the intersection of political participation and higher education measures of success were discussed, including foci on STEM students, first generation college students, student leaders, and others. (Editor’s note: If you are interested in further exploring this question, please contact Kassie Phebillo at kphebillo@campusvoteproject.org)!
3) Which campus-led strategies are most effective for registering community college students to vote? How can nonprofit organizations better support nonpartisan voter engagement efforts led by community colleges?
Led by the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition’s Clarissa Unger, this breakout explored the differences in student contexts, on average, between those attending 2-year community colleges and those attending 4-year institutions. The average age of community college students is 27, so typical youth engagement strategies are not always the most applicable at community colleges. Other factors discussed included how the self-efficacy of community college students may affect their confidence to vote for the first time, whether utilizing Federal Work-Study funds for nonpartisan student voter engagement at community colleges could increase registration and turnout, and the effect of on-campus polling sites. Despite recent gains, in 2020 students at community colleges were registered and voted at a rate 9 percentage points lower than students at 4-year public institutions, underlining the importance of outside support from the nonprofit sector. (Editor’s note: If you are interested in further exploring this question, please contact Clarissa Unger at Clarissa@slsvcoalition.org)!
The upshot
Overall, the 2024 State of the Student Vote Workshop was an amazing afternoon of intriguing research findings, helpful takeaways for campus civic engagement leaders, and wide-ranging discussions of how to best do this work in different student communities. In just two years, the Student Vote Research Network has grown into a vibrant community of researchers, practitioners, nonprofit and philanthropic partners, and students, fostering relationships that will help chart the course toward 100% student voter participation throughout the US.
We look forward to seeing what collaborations and research studies emerge as a result of the ideas shared and connections made on April 3—and will continue to share those with you in this Substack!