The pro-Palestine demonstrations erupting at colleges across the country could have a major impact on November’s presidential election, a political science professor says.
“In 2016, there were 93 million voters that were eligible to vote that didn't vote,” Sonoma State University Professor David McCuan told KNX News’ Charles Feldman. “Most of those were emerging voters or younger voters, and they can alter their participation patterns.”
In 2018, young people went to the polls in droves after protesting the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. A similar outpouring of young Democratic voters came out in 2022. But McCuan said Democrats shouldn’t take their votes for granted, especially in three key states they need to win to secure the presidency: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
While there’s still a lot of time until November, McCuan said the campus protests “present some difficulty” for the Biden campaign.
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“The issues around Gaza and what's happening in the Middle East have been particularly acute across voter subsets, not just with younger voters, but with diverse voters as well as newer voters,” he said. “That means that those three states – Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – are absolutely critical and would threaten a reelection of Joe Biden if they were to lose two of those three states.”
When asked Thursday if the protests have changed his mind on policy surrounding Gaza, Biden answered, “No.”
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