Colleen Sharkey | November 6, 2019
The numbers of student voters at the University of Notre Dame rose nearly 20 percentage points in last year’s midterm elections, according to the new 2014 and 2018 Campus Report from the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE).
At Notre Dame, 37.1 percent of students voted in the 2018 midterms, compared to 17.3 percent in the 2014 elections, following a national trend. Undergraduate and graduate students voted at nearly equal rates in 2014, at 15.2 percent and 16.3 percent respectively, and both jumped significantly in 2018 to 32.9 percent and 33.1 percent respectively.
The Campus Report is the only national study of college-student voting and is based on the voting records of more than 10 million students at more than 1,000 colleges and universities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The percentage of Notre Dame students who voted in 2018 (37.1 percent) was slightly lower than the national average (39.1 percent) and average for comparable private, research-focused universities (41.2 percent). Students studying law and in majors associated with the College of Arts and Letters showed the highest levels of voting. The majority of Notre Dame students voted absentee or via early voting, reflecting the broad geographic diversity within the student population. The full campus report can be viewed here.
The report is part of NSLVE, conducted by the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life and led by director Nancy Thomas. Thomas will visit Notre Dame Nov. 5-7 to participate in various events with students, faculty and staff with the aim of further enhancing civic learning at Notre Dame, which will host the first presidential debate in 2020.
Read more here.
Originally published by at dailydomer.nd.edu on November 06, 2019.