The Democratic Party is losing a reliable voter demographic since America’s college campuses have shut down or strictly curtailed in-person operations, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Voter registration rates among students have fallen in swing states including Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina.
Fewer than 40 college students, on average, fill out voter registrations each week.
For comparison, between 100 and 200 students, on average, registered each week at seven progressive universities in these states during the fall of 2016.
Ohio State University has seen a 94- percent reduction in registrations, and Michigan State University faces a 93-percent reduction.
There were 5,000 student registrations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and 1,300 at Michigan State in 2016. So far, not even half as many students have registered to vote at these colleges.
College-age students, who often report the low levels of political knowledge and involvement, traditionally vote for Democratic candidates in overwhelming numbers.
“It is sad to see that we cannot encourage people to go vote by literally handing them a registration form and watching them fill it out, but we do have social media on our side,” said Madi Mrzygod, president of the College Democrats at North Carolina State University.
Left-leaning platforms like Facebook have been relentless in flooding users’ feeds with reminders to register as Democrats desperately scramble to revise voting laws in order to expand controversial mail-in voting procedures.
However, some say that the lag may be misleading coming off recent election cycles where Democrats have fared better than average in ramping up their engagement numbers.
Despite virus anxieties, student voter-registration during the recent spring primaries was higher, on average, than it was at some universities in spring 2016.
Some evidence also suggests that high turnout among students in the 2018 midterm elections may have carried Democrats to their win in the House, Forbes reported.
The percentage of college students who voted in 2018 was 40 percent, up from only 19 percent in 2014.
After getting repeatedly “shellacked” in Congress during the Obama presidency, Democrats picked up 40 House seats in 2018, the highest number of gains for the party since 1974.
