Early data displays a historic turnout in youth votes for the Wisconsin Supreme Court primary election Tuesday.
In the recent primary, there was an unprecedented level of youth voter retention between a general and spring primary election. In one Madison ward, the voter retention among youth from the general to the spring primary was nearly eight times more than in 2019, according to a press release from NextGen America.
“At one of the main polling locations for UW-Madison freshmen, over 500 votes were cast – a major jump from 2019, when only 44 votes were cast in the same location,” NextGen America President Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez said in the press release.
NextGen America Vice President of Campaign Strategy David Sánchez said implications for the future of abortion rights and voting rights are the two key issues that are important to the younger population.
Because those rights are on the line, youth voter turnout was much higher this year, according to University of Wisconsin student Dante de la Rosa.
“Electing a state Supreme Court justice is really important to young people because we are looking to the future,” de la Rosa said. “And knowing what impacts those [issues] can have on us makes our generations really see the importance of elections and what change and impact elections do have on our society.”
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Currently, there is a conservative majority in the Wisconsin Supreme Court. If the liberal candidate win the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, the courts could revisit these major implications, Sánchez said.
A liberal majority could mean overturning the 1849 abortion law that forbids abortions in nearly all cases, making the April election a contentious race, Sánchez said.
For young people, this election is about looking toward their rights in the long term, de la Rosa said. The primaries historic youth voter turnout shows hope for future generations as the younger people take part, through voting, in deciding their future, according to UW student Elena Tomchek.
“When you start to think about rights that are being taken away and when you start talking to them and having conversations with young people on campus about the issues that are happening in this election, it really turned them out to vote,” Sánchez said.
