Four weeks before Election Day in East Lansing, MSU students from Spartans For Abdul left sprawling messages in chalk on the sidewalks surrounding the intersection of Birch Road and West Shaw Lane. Starting at the southeast: Spartans 4 Abdul. Then, fanning out across the remaining three corners: Money out of politics. Money in your pocket. Medicare for all.
The messages join a plethora of midterm markers around campus. Reminders in chalk from other organizations to vote on Nov. 3. Posters on bus stops claiming that Spartans can be a deciding voice in the election. Organizers with clipboards on the campus library bridge asking students if they’re registered to vote. Weekly office hours held by MSUVote at the Broad Art Museum to help students make a voting plan.
As MSUVote’s Democratic Engagement Coordinator Katie Burkhardt said, “We’re excited that students are getting involved and seeing that their vote truly counts. There’s a lot of energy around this election.”
How much electoral energy comes out of MSU and Ingham County will likely have a big impact on Election Day. Young voters are key for Democrats in every election, but recent polling suggests their opposition to President Donald Trump could be a significant factor this year. An October Harvard Youth Poll found that 63% of likely voters ages 18 to 29 supported Democrats in the midterm elections, compared with 26% who supported Republicans. Across campus and beyond, student leaders and other activists seek to harness enthusiasm among young voters into wins on Nov. 3.
College Town Impact
Like other counties classified as College Towns by the American Communities Project, the youth vote in Ingham County is a crucial part of the electorate. For the upcoming midterms in Michigan, new findings from Tufts’ John M. Tisch College predict young adult voters will be especially powerful.
Tisch’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) released data-based rankings in July of upcoming elections “where the youth can swing a race.” Michigan ranks second in Senate races. Its governor's race takes the fourth slot in the gubernatorial category.
And, importantly for Ingham, the Michigan 7th Congressional District race lands first in the CIRCLE lineup of House District rankings. Incumbent Rep. Tom Barrett and local community organizer William Lawrence, the Republican and Democratic nominees, are oft-cited figures for the student groups MSU College Democrats and MSU College Republicans.
While the majority of students might not necessarily be aware of the specific data points, Burkhardt says that, “I’ve definitely seen, at least from student leaders who speak with me, that they are very aware of the eyes on Michigan and of how big some of these races are.”
And the interest in the big races in the state extends beyond Ingham County and even beyond Michigan. At the Oct. 10 football game, a group of students from Brown Dems of Brown University in Rhode Island roamed the maze of grills and games of cornhole talking to potential voters. Their group made it a goal to support Democratic candidates in what they considered to be “high-impact states.”
The Campus Voices
Only a handful of students attended the weekly meeting of the Michigan State University chapter of Students for Abdul, dubbed Spartans for Abdul, on Oct. 6. But even during the “low-key” meeting, as Senior Organizing Fellow Hana Sakkijha described it when she gave a presentation in the small classroom in Case Hall, the passion was evident.
“You guys are all here because you want to get Abdul elected. This is how we do it,” Hana said as she encouraged everyone in attendance to sign up for clipboarding and tabling opportunities. “This is how people on campus hear about Abdul, is by talking to voters, specifically students, who historically don’t turn out as highly.”
Research corroborates her observation. Election results consistently show young people are less likely to vote in midterm elections than other voters. And new data from CIRCLE shows Michigan is among the states where youth voter registration is lower than it was ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
Yet MSU and its students have tended to produce strong voter turnout in previous elections, and may do so again. In 2024, the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, an initiative from Civic Nation that seeks to “substantially increase the number of college students who are democratically engaged on an ongoing basis,” recognized MSU as one of 471 Most Engaged Campuses for College Student Voting nationwide.
And with the upcoming election, Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum said, “We do expect a high voter turnout, higher than a typical off-year election.”
When it comes to Democratic student votes, Kai, a member of MSU Dems, sees the Democratic Socialists of America as “a really, really big part of the revitalization of the party. They’re bringing in a lot of people who previously didn’t seem like they were willing to vote for us. And they’re really bringing attention to a lot of the issues that a lot of the younger generations have.”
Though climate change is top of mind for him, personally, he notes that “pretty much everyone I know is really focused on trying to see some improvement with cost of living,” whether through gas prices, housing, or regulations on major corporations.
On the other side of the spectrum, Abby Re serves as Communications Liaison for Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative youth organization that promotes conservative ideas.
She says, “One main discussion I have noticed among Conservative students and that I am also concerned about is the emergence of support for the Democratic Socialist Party. [...] If a Democratic Socialist candidate like El-Sayed wins the Senate race in our historically more moderate state, it will show a significant shift in the attitudes of the average American voter.” (El-Sayed has said he is not a Democratic Socialist.)
Re observed that conservative student voters also consider “continued financial strain” a big consideration heading into the midterms. Surveys show that issue is driving voters everywhere, but perhaps hitting lower-income groups, such as young people, harder.
Beyond the Campus
Of course, East Lansing isn’t the whole picture of Ingham County elections, and certainly contention can be found elsewhere. In particular, many citizens of Mason have rallied against their City Council members concerning a potential data center. The public outcry has spanned months, inspired t-shirts, and caught the attention of NBC News.
Mason’s City Council meetings have served as the forum for Mason citizens to rail against Mayor Russell Whipple and the six other councilmembers. At a Sept. 14 meeting and town hall, dozens of residents turned out to voice concerns about the potential data center, including 7th Congressional District candidate William Lawrence. Opposition to the development dominated public comment.
The controversy continued into October. On Oct. 19, the City Council voted unanimously to postpone consideration of a proposed zoning ordinance rewrite until next year, when newly elected council members will be in office. The proposed changes include provisions regulating potential data center developments.
Despite the firestorm surrounding data centers in Mason, the issue did not come up in interviews with Katie Burkhardt, Kai or Abby Re about student voting concerns.
What Mason and East Lansing seem to share, though, is fervor. Citizens are gathering, campaigning, making their wants known.
As Kai said of young Democratic voters, “This does feel like one of the first elections, at least since I’ve paid attention to politics, where younger people are actually excited about the possibility of seeing some new people get power that actually represent our interests and needs.”
Interview Transcript
Sophia Saliby: The American Communities Project, housed at Michigan State University, uses demographic data, surveys and economic numbers to understand political issues in a more holistic way.
The project has coined more than a dozen different community types from "Big Cities" to "Evangelical Hubs" to "Working Class Country" to define counties across the U.S.
This fall, a group of MSU students each selected a Michigan county to report on ahead of the November elections to see what the data says about how people might vote.
Emily Green took on Ingham County which is defined as a "College Town" community within the project. She joins us now. Thank you for being here.
Emily Green: Thank you for having me.
Saliby: I'm sure people in Ingham County who don't live in East Lansing were like, "Wait, I don't live in a college town." Can you explain how this label is used through the project?
Green: They have aggregated a lot of data points to be able to define these different community types, and based on just the makeup of counties that are surrounding college towns that tends to be the defining feature of them.
Saliby: What kind of data did you use to put together your article based on this this "College Town" moniker?
Green: So, I talked to a lot of leaders on campus to understand how the student vote and how different student groups are preparing for the midterms.
I also looked outside of East Lansing to Mason, where a lot of contention around data centers has sprung up, because those two spots, East Lansing and Mason, tend to be the ones in Ingham, where at least I've seen a lot of fervor coming up around the midterms.
Saliby: So, on young voters, what kinds of issues do they care about?
Green: From the people I spoke to, both of them brought up cost of living. In particular, I spoke with a member of MSU Democrats who talked about seeing a lot of students wanting to see reform around housing, gas prices, and around major corporations to see costs come down.
Saliby: And then you also mentioned Mason. Do you feel like this opposition to data centers is kind of a bigger trend that is driving people to the polls.
Green: In Mason? Certainly. But it doesn't seem to have reached East Lansing as much.
Saliby: And was there anything surprising you discovered?
Green: I was surprised that I also spoke with a member of Young Americans for Freedom, which is a conservative group on campus. And the student I spoke to also brought up cost of living as a major consideration that conservative voters are taking into the polls, so that parallelism with a Democratic student was surprising to me.
Saliby: So, you have all this data that you've looked at. You've talked to folks. You know, what is the conclusion there about this initial question about what the data says about how people might vote?
Green: College towns tend to lean liberal, so that wouldn't be surprising if that was an outcome. But I think more so for me, the takeaway is the engagement with voting. County clerks are expecting a higher turnout than other off-election years, which I think shows, regardless of partisanship, that there is just a lot of attention in Ingham County for the elections.
Saliby: Emily Green is a Michigan State University student. You can find her article on Ingham County and other American Communities Project reports at wkar.org. Thank you for joining us, Emily.
Green: Thank you.