Young voters reflect on three election cycles with Trump on the ballot
Young voters born in the mid-to-late '90s have faced three election cycles where the stakes seem massive, the candidates don’t feel fresh and Trump has been a constant on the ballot, they said.
Avery Dalal has never seen a presidential ballot without Donald Trump’s name on it. For the third time, the 26-year-old from Texas is preparing to cast his vote against the former president. He did so for the first time in 2016, and he said the tone of national politics has only gotten more chaotic since.
“It’s kind of hard to imagine having a ‘normal election,’” Dalal told NBC News. “I don’t even know what that means anymore.”
As Election Day approaches, campaigns are making their last-ditch effort to court young voters like Dalal. But those young millennials and older Gen Z voters born in the mid-to-late ’90s, who went to the polls for the first time in 2016, say they’re exhausted and disillusioned. They’ve faced three election cycles where the stakes seem massive, the candidates don’t feel fresh and the Republican nominee has remained the same, they said.
Dalal said the doomism, racist rhetoric, sexual abuse allegations and rampant misinformation that has emerged throughout the past three election cycles has made following national politics dizzying. He’s tired, he said, and so are many of his peers.
Those who voted for the first time in 2016 grew up witnessing a series of unprecedented events.
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