TexasYoung Voters in Texas: The Turnout of a Lifetime

On election day, I went out to the Houston Community College Alief Hayes location to see what the young voter turnout was like on the final day of voting. The voting location did not have a large amount of traffic, but I was able to speak with a couple of voters under 30 as well as a first-time voter.

Young voters in Houston have shown up to vote early in this election at an astonishing rate. My goal was to see if the trend would continue into election day. This particular location did not break any records on election day, but I thought it would be an excellent location to study due to it being a community college campus.

I got to speak with three voters on my Instagram live, one of which was a first-time voter. Lauryn Campbell is a sophomore at Texas State University and was able to vote for the first time in this election.

Lauryn voted on campus during early voting. She said that she was very excited to vote and glad that her voice could finally be heard. I asked her if she thought that Texas would go blue this election, and she said that she wasn’t convinced that they would, but you never know.

Shawn Jones is a 26-year-old restaurant manager. He also cast his ballot during the early voting period. This was the third election that Shawn has been able to vote in. “People in our age group may have been interested in the results of the election but not enough to go out and vote,” said Shawn.

Shawn believes that people in our age group feel like there is more a stake now, and that motivates them to vote. He thought that Texas would remain a red state, which did become the case.

The third person I spoke to was working at the voting site. He said that he had not voted yet but planned to before he left that day. This voter said that he was not that interested in politics, but he felt like he had a responsibility to vote.

Overall, I did not get to interview as many people as I would have hoped, but it was still a successful study. Young people have been fired up to vote in this election. I hope that this trend continues, regardless of this election’s results.