Consider This from NPR - What Do Young Voters in Wisconsin Want?

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Elections are tight in many parts of the US these days. They certainly are in the battleground state of Wisconsin, where the last two presidential elections were decided by very thin margins. This year's midterms could be just as tight in the state. For Democrats, who are hoping to pick up a US Senate seat in Wisconsin, a key factor will be turnout among young voters. NPR's Juana Summers talked to three Wisconsin voters under the age of 30 to find out what issues are driving them to the polls this year. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. If you want to know how razor thin the margins are in elections here in the U.S., just take a look at the battleground state of Wisconsin. In the 2016 election, Donald Trump won the presidency in part because he barely won Wisconsin. Out of more than 4 million votes cast in the state, Trump won by a little more than 22,000. In 2020, things were even tighter. That time, it was Joe Biden who took the White House in part by carrying Wisconsin by a margin of just over 20,000 votes.

And now in the midterm elections of 2022, well, expect more of the same, says Bill Glauber, political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It's Wisconsin. It's going to be close. And I think anybody who thinks that the elections won't be close doesn't know Wisconsin. The White House is not on the line this year, but the governor's mansion is, as well as a U.S. Senate seat. Democratic Governor Tony Evers is in a tight race with his Republican challenger, the businessman Tim Michaels. And the Senate race was tight about a month ago between Democratic Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes and incumbent Republican Senator Ron Johnson. But now it seems like Johnson might be

pulling away just a bit. Barnes did not seem too concerned with that when he spoke to my colleague Juana Summers recently. Polls go up and polls go down. Last three November elections were all decided about 30,000 votes or fewer. We always knew this is going to be neck and neck. One issue the Democrats hope will separate the two candidates is abortion. Here's what Lieutenant Governor Barnes told NPR. Well, 70 percent of people in Wisconsin think Roe should be the law of the land. And that's how out of touch and extreme Ron Johnson's position is. And he supported abortion bans that had no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. Meanwhile, Bill Glauber of the journal Sentinel says Senator Johnson has used a familiar GOP playbook to give himself a little breathing room in the polls.

Well, after the primary, Ron Johnson, Republicans and GOP allies basically firebombed Mandela Barnes on the air with television commercials criticizing his record on criminal justice issues. Barnes wanted to abolish ICE, open our borders to illegal immigrants, and release violent felons without bail. Mandela Barnes, dangerously liberal on crime. And there was not enough of a response by Barnes, Democrats, and their allies, and that's where the polling shifted. If Barnes and the Democrats want those polls

to shift back in their favor, one key factor is going to be turnout, including among the state's young people. They've been voting more and more in recent election cycles, but there's no guarantee that they will turn out for Democrats in sufficient numbers this year. Consider this. Nowhere does the phrase, every vote counts, ring truer than in Wisconsin. With so much at stake in these midterms, what are the issues driving young voters to the polls in the state? From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Monday, October 31st. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. We are just over a week out from the end of voting in this year's midterm elections, and turnout among young voters will be one of the key factors for Democrats hoping to capture an important U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin. So my colleague, Juana Summers, traveled to that battleground state to get a sense of what election season looks like there. Outside an Indian health center, the group Wisconsin Native Vote unveiled a colorful mural as the Ho-Chunk Nation's Wisconsin Dells, singers and dancers performed. Mark Denning, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, rallied the crowd. This is the largest Native population in the state of Wisconsin, and your vote matters. We get done. Go ahead. Yeah, raise some noise.

And at an event focused on Latino voters, there were bowls full of tortilla chips and trays full of churros. A small group gathered to show support for Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes. He's the Democrat hoping to flip one of Wisconsin's Senate seats. Wisconsin Congresswoman Gwen Moore made the case for Barnes. But what you need to say to people is, look, go out there and vote your values. And on a busy street corner outside the Milwaukee public market, organizers in bright purple shirts were encouraging people to pledge to vote. Matthew Grover is with the youth voting group NextGen America.

You take a moment and sign a pledge promising you'll show up. I will do it. Yay! Thank you so much. Young voters turned out in increasing numbers in the last two election cycles. But our most recent NPR Marist National Poll found that this year, young voters are among the least likely to vote this fall. So we wanted to ask some young people about the issues they see as most important. My name is Kai Rollins. I'm 19.

I'm an undergraduate student at Marquette University studying physics and Spanish. And I'm independent but left-leaning. I'm Melanie Medina. I'm 20 years old. I do consider myself left-leaning as well. I live here with my roommate, my boyfriend, my cat, and I'm a dental receptionist. My name is Kara Walla. I'm 29 years old. I'm a software engineer, and I live with my husband and four cats in downtown Milwaukee. Oh, and I identify as left-leaning. We brought Kai, Melanie, and Kara together at the studios of member station WUWM to talk about the issues that matter to them, starting with the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. It was scary. I'm definitely, you know, at an age where I'm thinking about the possibility of being pregnant in the next few years. And it's like, you know, you don't know what you have until it's gone. Like, I didn't really appreciate Roe v. Wade until

it came to this point where now I'm having to think about being in that position of, you know, having something go wrong in a pregnancy and then not being able to access health care until a point where, you know, my own health is threatened as well. And it's really scary. Yeah. And for me, the whole decision was really discouraging because first, when the news leaked about like the possibility of it being overturned. There was national outrage. And there were polls held then, and there was still a majority that believed it shouldn't be overturned. And then the Supreme Court went and overturned it. What about you, Melanie?

It's definitely scary to think that health care isn't going to be available until you're almost, you know, like on the deathbed. It's definitely something that can't be decided upon by people who don't have, you know, uteruses. Let's talk about some of those other issues then. I'd like to talk about one that I think affects everyone, no matter what age you are, and that's the economy right now. Oh, definitely, definitely. Okay, what does that make you think of? You had an immediate reaction, Melanie. The cost of living has gotten so bad, honestly. Like I moved out from home right when I was 18. It was semi-cheap.

I don't know about you guys. I mean, you're a college student, but like just working and everything, groceries have gotten really bad. I know like even streaming services have like gotten really bad too. Like it's gotten really costly so far. This is Karen. My husband and I just bought a house last year and between mortgage payments and then like car payments, we're starting to think like, is it even doable to have kids in this economy? We're like a two income household.

I don't know even how we would pay for daycare or all of the expenses of raising a kid right now. Yeah, I am concerned about that. As we've talked about this big bucket of economic issues like housing affordability, cost of living, food prices, are there any specific things that any of you would like to see your elected officials do to address those things that are making daily life feel really unaffordable right now? Well, I definitely am always in favor of continuing to build affordable housing in the Milwaukee area. In some ways, it also kind of, I feel a little powerless about it. Like, I'm not totally sure how much the elected officials can really do. I think that making sure that, you know, the super wealthy are paying their fair

share and, you know, closing tax loopholes, I think that would be huge. That would be really significant. Yeah. And I feel like their money could make a huge difference in the country if they used it correctly. But I'm not confident that our government would use it correctly either, especially with kind of the political climate at the moment. This is Kara again. Something that's really frustrating to see is that in Milwaukee, we're having some pretty basic services having to be cut back, like our parks are understaffed. And then we just got news that a lot of the libraries are having to cut staffing hours.

And I think I even read that they're shutting down computer labs at some of those libraries because of how short the city is on budget this year, which just is crazy because those are really significant public resources for those communities. I want to talk about climate change a little bit. Why is that such an important issue for you? And what do you feel like the White House and Congress could do to better address it? Oh, it's so huge. It feels like an existential threat in a lot of ways. It's just so massive. And, you know, I'm worried about both what I will see in my lifetime as well as like my children and grandchildren's lifetimes. I'm so worried

about pollution. I'm worried about microplastics. It just seems like there's so much to worry about right now. You know, I want us to protect the Great Lakes, you know, our massive reservoir of fresh water that we have here. I would love to see our elected officials move to, you know, protect our water systems, move towards biodegradable plastics. I would love to see legislation around that. Maybe that's a pipe dream, but I would love to see us moving in that direction. And green and renewable energies, I think is huge too. Yeah, I definitely agree. It's scary to think about the earth not being able to sustain everyone who lives on there. It's definitely caused a little bit of anxiety for me. I'm not sure about you guys,

but it's definitely a stressor, especially like I'm pretty sure it's a stressor for people who can't get to clean water and everything. We've talked about a lot of issues and I'd like to ask, how are you all feeling about the Senate race? Well, I would really like to see Barnes win. And it is frustrating to see how much money has been pouring into Johnson's side of the race. Like the amount of ads that I've been getting is, you know, astronomical. And this is a really significant race, I think, for the Democrats. Barnes was leading earlier in the summer, and now I think he's fallen behind Johnson. Really frustrating to see that sort of change in the polls. Do now I think he's fallen behind Johnson. Really frustrating to see that sort of change in the polls. Do you think he can win? I think he can win. I've been reaching out

to the high schoolers that I know. I'm like, tell your friends to register to vote, please. I would really, really, really like if Mandela, you know, won. I do think that he can. I was at his meet and greet, and one thing that both him and Gwen Moore were talking about is voting for your values. And I definitely do think that if we told people, think about your values, and then you can just go ahead and correlate those to whosever values are closer to yours. And I do definitely think if we get people to register, I'm pretty sure he would be able to win. We've got Congress, Democrats have control by an incredibly slim margin. As outsiders, what do you think the solution is to breaking through some of that logjam and the situation where it seems like there's oftentimes just little space for compromise? I do think that we have to get more younger people in Congress and the House of Representatives. We do have a lot of older people in there, and their, you know, opinions, their views aren't really, they don't reflect on what we think now.

It's not, you know, the 1900s anymore. Yeah, I think making sure that the younger generation's views are being taken into consideration and need to be represented. Two things that I'd like to see. So one of them is I'd like to see improved access to voting for everyone. You know, I think that right now that the people that find it hardest to vote are young people and minority voters. And I think it would be really significant if we made voting easier. And it feels like in the last few years, we've been going backwards, you know, with like the Republicans have been talking a lot about like election credibility. But a lot of that just comes down to restricting access to voting for people who should legitimately be able to vote, which is super, super frustrating.

And then the second thing I would love to see corporate dollars mattering less in elections. It's frustrating to see elections being able to be won by whoever can spend the most money on that campaign. I know that we are just about two weeks away from the midterm elections, but before we know it, there is going to be another presidential election in 2024. So I'd like to ask each of you for your opinion of President Joe Biden's term in office so far. This is Carol. Go ahead. I think I've been maybe more pleased than I thought I would be so far with his term. I don't think he's necessarily like an inspiring, you know, president, but it's been very nice to have a president that isn't constantly embroiled with scandals every single day. I completely agree. But also, it is concerning with the age of who we're electing as presidents.

My grandparents are similar ages to him, and there's no way I'd want one of my grandparents running the country. And that's no offense to them, but there's so much unpredictability at that age. And I don't think that level of uncertainty is necessarily something we should look for in a leader. Do you all think that President Biden should run for a second term? He's getting old. Do we want Grandpa Joe in there? Yeah, that has been frustrating to see, and it hasn't been historically like this. So I'm a millennial, and I think that Kai and Melanie, you two are probably Gen Z, right? I think so. I am 20.

Well, I'd love to see some younger people in politics. And at this point, it's like by younger, you could be a younger person in politics in your 60s. That's the place that we're at. We just heard from Kara Walla, Melanie Medina, and Kai Rolands, all Wisconsin voters under the age of 30, talking to my colleague, Juana Summers. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation,

providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education,

democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org.