Younger Individuals obtained concerned within the 2020 election. Ariel Skelley/DigitalVision through Getty Photographs

As Individuals finish one 12 months and start one other, probably the most controversial matters of dialog would be the presidential election.

We skilled the election season from a novel perspective. We every taught school programs on the 2020 campaigns whereas they had been underway, and in consequence had a type of three-month-long focus-grouplike dialog with the most recent American voters.

One in all us teaches at a small liberal arts school, the opposite at a flagship state college, each in Virginia. Our mixed 275 undergraduate college students got here from rural and concrete areas, North and South, and from cities and states all throughout the nation. Practically all had been voting of their first presidential election. Like many American schools, ours have slight majorities of ladies over males, and a better proportion of whites within the scholar physique than within the U.S. inhabitants as a complete.

Our college students had been anxious and keen about the subject material and shared a few of their fears and insights with us and with each other. We tried to elucidate how nationwide politics works, and we realized from their contemporary views on the presidency and presidential elections. After an election 12 months marked by wrestle and problem, what we noticed gave us some hope.

Franklin Pierce and Warren Harding weren’t thrilling presidents. What about Joe Biden?

The Dialog, from Mathew Brady/Library of Congress through Wikimedia Commons, Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress through Wikimedia Commons, Gage Skidmore through Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-ND

Historic precedent

Our college students, whereas younger, acknowledged that 2020 was a consequential contest with out apparent parallels in latest American elections. One of many candidates was a mesmerizing and polarizing populist who rose to political fame simply 4 years in the past; the opposite was a well-recognized actor on the nationwide stage for practically 5 many years – three many years longer than our college students have been alive.

A standard theme was division. A few of our college students wrote about earlier elections and noticed comparisons between 2020 and 1800, when partisanship ran sizzling and slanderous commentary was widespread. Some thought right now was extra like 1968, with civil rights activism, indignant political protests, a silent majority and racist canine whistles that everybody may hear.

A number of thought 2020 was like 1852, when each events struggled to keep away from the exhausting points going through the nation; or 1920, when a war-weary and pandemic-exhausted nation craved normalcy.

If these final two comparisons held, they’d make Joe Biden the subsequent Franklin Pierce or the subsequent Warren Harding – presidents who weren’t precisely awe-inspiring.

And like most Individuals, the scholars had been frightened about what they noticed occurring within the nation. A casual survey in one in every of our lessons confirmed that of the greater than 200 college students who responded, over 50% had been stressed and exhausted by the election. A number of – 15% – even mentioned they had been “scared” by what they had been seeing in nationwide politics.

A primary-time voter takes a selfie after casting a poll in Michigan in November 2020.

Seth Herald/AFP through Getty Photographs

Political engagement

However our college students weren’t turned off by the election.

All the surveyed college students had been first-time voters and practically all of them really voted. Nearly all – 95% – thought the vote-counting course of was performed pretty. Twenty-five % obtained past the stress and exhaustion and reported that they felt and energized by the election. Solely 3% had been bored by it.

Even higher: Greater than 85% of scholars mentioned they’d become involved in politics within the years forward. Of these, one in 4 mentioned they’d contemplate operating for workplace themselves; six in 10 need to work in a public coverage job on points they care about.

These numbers are maybe inflated by the lofty ambitions of the younger individuals who attend extremely selective establishments of upper training. However even when our outcomes are from an admittedly small and non-random pattern, they’re nonetheless encouraging – particularly in contrast with polling in earlier years. Our college students is not going to be content material to remain at residence and depart politics to others. These are the type who’re prepared to alter the world.

In one in every of our programs, college students took time in the beginning of sophistication intervals to report on the place the candidates stood on the main problems with the day. This was info that was exhausting to seek out within the chaotic candidate debates or in superficial social media messaging. For each of us, taking points critically in a predominantly character-focused marketing campaign was a aid from detrimental promoting and Twitter tirades, and it made our college students extra assured observers of what was actually at stake in 2020.

This type of partisan conflict doesn’t enchantment to most of the college students the authors taught.

David Ryder/Getty Photographs

Bipartisan conversations

We had been stunned to seek out that studying about this election made our college students much less partisan. Within the casual class survey, a majority mentioned the course had lowered, not enhanced, their partisanship.

In one in every of our programs, we introduced opposing viewpoints from Republican and Democratic visitor audio system, taking the scholars out of the bubble of their one-sided information feeds. College students in that class mentioned {that a} spotlight of the course was asking questions that utilized to audio system from either side, after which evaluating the solutions.

Individuals are divided by extra than simply political get together affiliation. In one in every of our lessons, college students learn Ezra Klein’s “Why We’re Polarized,” which presents proof that American partisanship is more and more intertwined with geography, demography, non secular conviction and stage of training.

Good universities settle for candidates from totally different backgrounds and create alternatives for discussions that contain college students with totally different political beliefs. Our college students instructed us that taking an election course made them higher outfitted for the exhausting conversations about politics and coverage that usually happen between family and friends members.

Don’t get us mistaken – partisanship is alive and effectively on school campuses, the place liberal factors of view are sometimes overrepresented. However our college students confirmed much less partisan division than we had anticipated and appeared open to argument and proof from multiple facet of the political spectrum. Actually, the surveyed college students mentioned by a 70-30 margin that they recurrently speak about politics with associates who’ve a unique political view from their very own – one thing Klein argues is just not sometimes the case with most Individuals today.

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Was their considerably subdued partisanship as a result of their publicity to 2020 controversies occurred within the constraints of a school classroom? Or do they belong to a technology that’s going to reject the hyperpartisanship of their elders and take a look at tougher to seek out widespread floor and customary sense in American politics?

We don’t know the reply, however we simply accomplished a semester through which our nation’s latest voters gave us some hope for the way forward for American civil society.

The authors don’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that might profit from this text, and have disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.