How the 2018 Midterm Elections affect 2020 election cycle
by Brendan Manning
edited by Walker John
Academic Affairs hosted a televised roundtable discussion this afternoon on the 2018 midterm elections and how they will impact the upcoming 2020 presidential election.
The roundtable discussion was hosted by three Franklin Pierce Students, Julius Peel, Alexander Thenin and Dante Camacho. Each student focused on specific county’s political culture and midterm election cycle across the United States.
They dove deep into the many things that lead to the political climate that shaped the outcomes of the 2018 midterms and their future impact on the upcoming 2020 election cycle. The three specific topics they investigated were finances of the campaigns, important statistics on voter turnout, and the impact political backdrops made on county voting results.
The turnout was historic for the 2018 midterm elections. “This was the highest voter turnout since universal suffrage,” said Dante Camacho. The turnout for the elections was driven by a number of political trends that have appeared in the United States over the past few years.
(Photo: Brendan Manning)
One of those trends they discussed was the strong feelings towards the polarizing issues facing the United States citizens today such as immigration. In many California counties, immigration was a hot pressed issue due to the political backdrop of the State. 27% of Californians are foreign born citizens and the state lands right on the polarizing United States-Mexico borders. Voters in these districts showed up to the polls in record numbers mainly due to the fact that immigration has been such a pressed issue facing their community.
Youth voters made a big impact on the overall midterm outcomes. “This was the highest turnout in youth voters in American history,” said Julius Peel. Targeting the youth was a big emphasis on this election cycle as politicians and PAC’s focused most of their campaign spending on social media advertisements for their candidate.
Social media was a big role player in the strong youth voter turnout. Campaigns have been using variations of ads throughout popular social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to raise awareness about what their candidate stands for.
Not only do campaigns use these popular social media websites to spread awareness about their campaign with ads, they use the content that people are viewing on these social media websites to target a specific audience. “If you watch only conservative content your Facebook, Twitter will send you conservative content and it does the same thing for liberal content,” Alexander Thenin said. This is a dangerous system as it makes it harder for people to access facts and information that may counter their beliefs and effectively give light to another viewpoint.
This midterm election was the most funded midterms in the nations history, and second most expensive overall election cycle. “Estimates for the spending all together was 5.2 billion,” said Camacho. This number is a 35% jump from the last midterm elections. Liberal leaning organizations contributed the most towards spending this midterm election.
Students packed the studio for the roundtable political discussion. “I thought the panel was educational and overall effective. It was cool to see students talk about real world politics as opposed just the political world surrounding Franklin Pierce,” said sophomore Aaron Brown who attended the discussion.
The roundtable discussion was the first of three discussions and panels being hosted in the Fitzwater Television studio during the Academic Showcase at Franklin Pierce University.
