Roe is gone, student debt is up, young people are mad. But will they vote in midterms?

For years Amini Bonane suffered from abnormal menstrual cycles. Getting doctors to take her and her reproductive health seriously was hard, until she was finally diagnosed with fibroids.

So when the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade was announced in June, Bonane was furious. The decision, she feared, would add even more difficulty for women like herself – especially young Black women – to get the care they need.

"It's really disheartening that there's decisions being made by people who aren't affected by these things," said Bonane, 27, a women's rights community organizer.

The same day the Dobbs decision was announced, Bonane protested in Washington, D.C. and started Fight for Fairfax, a PAC that advocates for women.

"My reaction is always going to be – because I'm a solution-oriented person – to join the collective and have our voices heard," Bonane said.

She's not alone.

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Democrats are betting that a summer of unprecedented news could motivate young people to show up and vote. The overturning of the 1973 Roe decision in particular could prompt young voters to turn out at historic levels – especially young women and other people who can become pregnant, like transgender men and nonbinary people. 

But young voters are notorious for skipping the polls, especially during midterm elections, fueling worries among some activists and campaigns that even such a momentous news year might not be enough to get those ballots in.

In a series of pre-midterm polls by youth voter organizations, young people listed abortion, the economy and climate change among their top issues – all issues that Democrats have targeted ahead of November's elections through campaigning and policy.

With President Joe Biden's decision to cancel student debt the icing on the cake, the Democratic Party is banking on young people to vote in record numbers, as they did during the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential elections.

Until the 2018 midterms, youth voter turnout had not surpassed 26% since at least 1994; just 20% of young people turned out to vote in the 2014 midterms, according to Tufts University's Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).

In 2018, however, CIRCLE estimated 28% of young people cast ballots. 

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But whether those strides will be enough to help Democrats retain control of Congress is yet to be seen.

Abortion rights remain top of mind

The party in power historically loses seats in Congress during midterms, and November's elections were not expected to be any different. Bruising headlines about inflation rates reaching a 40-year high and Biden's low approval rating stifled Democrats' hopes for retaining control of both chambers.  

But with gas prices beginning to fall and voters still reeling from the overturning of Roe this summer, Democrats appear to have been given a second chance.

The party's summer wins could level the playing field. The loss of even one Democratic Senate seat could cost the party their 50-50 majority with Vice President Kamala Harris' tiebreaking vote.

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Cameron Tiefenthaler, 20, had already decided to vote in the midterms. But she noticed more of her friends at Miami University in Ohio are now opening up to her about the midterms since the Dobbs decision.

"I definitely have seen more people talk about abortion and talk about issues that women and other people face much more so than I have seen before," Tiefenthaler said.

She was walking home with a friend last month who started talking to her about politics and reproductive health care. The friend had never brought up abortion before.

"My peers and I were born in the early 2000s. Up until this summer we had this right where we knew if we needed to have an abortion for whatever situation, we could have that," she said. "And now we have this right that's been stripped away from us."

In the wake of Roe's demise, the Biden administration issued an executive order in July instructing the Department of Health and Human Services to protect and expand access to abortion care. Democratic candidates have leaned in on abortion, too, holding events focused on reproductive rights and highlighting their support for legislation protecting access.

In Pennsylvania, lieutenant governor and Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate John Fetterman championed abortion rights at a rally last month where his wife, Gisele, introduced him as "John Fetterwoman." In Texas, the Democratic nominee for the 15th Congressional District, Michelle Vallejo, along with Rochelle Garza, Democratic nominee for attorney general, hosted a town hall on reproductive rights Thursday night.

Most abortion recipients in the U.S. are in their 20s, accounting for nearly 57% of those who had the procedure across the 47 states and Washington, D.C., that reported data to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2019.

Inflation Reduction Act

Other issues important to young people are at stake, as well. 

In mid-August, the passage of the landmark Inflation Reduction Act gave Democrats a badly needed win on climate change. The legislation, a slimmed-down version of the roughly $2 trillion Build Back Better bill, incentivizes clean energy investments, lowers prescription drug costs for seniors and extends health insurance subsidies for millions of others.

Led by teen activists like Greta Thunberg and Haven Coleman, young people have long sounded the alarms on climate change, urging their elected officials to act. Youth activists have created groups like the Sunrise Movement, which took over Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office in 2018.

The Inflation Reduction Act is the most substantial effort by the federal government to tackle climate change in history.

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Student loan debt relief still fresh ahead of election

A week after passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden announced he would cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt for millions of borrowers in August.

One-third of adults under 30 hold a combined $578 billion in student loan debt, about one-third of the $1.75 trillion total held by all Americans, according to the Education Data Initiative.

Kaila Pouncy, 20, a senior at the University of Alabama, will be the first person in her immediate family to earn a college degree. Neither of her parents could afford higher education.

Pouncy has $23,000 in student loan debt. It's why she's voting this year, she said.

"I've always had to work a lot in undergrad. Right now I have four jobs trying to keep myself afloat," she said. "If I weren't doing that work right now, I would have so much more time to either pour into my studies or either rest to prevent burnout."

The debt cancellation also means Pouncy can focus on applying and attending law school after she graduates. "That's kind of an extra weight being taken off my shoulders," she said.

But young voters are divided on the extent to which Biden's cancellation of at least $10,000 in student loan debt for millions of borrowers, or $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients, will be a motivating factor during the midterms.

Mike Sandifer, 23, a public health grad student at Emory University, said there was "mixed reaction" to Biden's announcement.

"For the average American student it really isn't a lot of money," Sandifer said. "But at the same time, I'm thankful for it because that's $10,000 to $20,000 that I don't have." Sandifer received a scholarship for undergraduate studies but took out about $130,000 in loans for graduate school.

Like other young voters, Sandifer said he hopes more student debt will be canceled. "I pray for it every night," he said.

More than 60% of voters ages 18 to 34 support Biden canceling $10,000 to $20,000 of student loan debt, according to a Morning Consult/Politico survey released in August.

Gen Z votes on issues, not party

Young people "are coming to the polls based on issues and not on parties," said Sara Guillermo, CEO of the nonprofit IGNITE, which encourages and trains young women to run for office.

In a mid-May survey of 3,200 respondents across 50 states, half whom belong to Gen Z, IGNITE found that the top issues for Gen Z women, transgender and nonbinary participants were health care, mass shootings, mental health, racial inequality and abortion. Cisgender men placed a larger importance on inflation and jobs than abortion or racial inequality.

But Guillermo pointed out that those and other top issues like climate change were just a few percentage points apart indicating that Gen Z voters vote based on a mix of many issues.

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Generation Z "is fighting for issues that look very different than the issues that my generation of millennials fought for,” Guillermo said. “When I was in middle and high school, that's when Columbine started (in 1999), and you had the next (mass shooting) a couple of years after. Today, mass shootings are every single day in this country."

Young voters "are living in a time that is very different,” she said.

Young voters have come of age in some of the most fraught moments in recent U.S. history: Recession fears abound, climate change shows no signs of slowing down, and mass shootings continue to dominate headlines.

Voter registration spikes after Roe

Gen Z's willingness to turn out for issues they care about was perhaps best demonstrated in Kansas this summer.

In the nation's first test vote on abortion access since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Kansas voters overwhelmingly upheld the right to an abortion there, shocking many in and outside the deeply red state.

According to data published by TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier, voter registration of young people in the state, particularly young women, sharply increased after Roe was overturned and continued to rise in the coming weeks.

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Bonier later told Vox that 52% of newly registered female voters in Kansas after the Dobbs decision were 25 years old or younger. On the referendum vote, Kansas women under 25 turned out to vote at a rate higher than all men, he said on Twitter.

Polling from NexGen America in Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin also showed that 2 in 3 young people said the Dobbs decision made them more likely to care about the midterm elections.

Will young people actually turn out?

After a historic summer, young voters told USA TODAY their cohort will have strong voter turnout in November. But the data is complicated.

A report from CIRCLE last month found youth registration levels have surpassed November 2018 levels in nearly half of the states with reliable voting data.

But for the youngest voters, those ages 18 to 19, only nine out of 41 states with reliable data show voter registration data has surpassed 2018, and many remain far behind – a sign that more work will need to be done to engage them.

Isaiah Hinzman, a 19-year-old pharmacy student at Eastern Arizona College, partnered with MTV on setting up voter registration booths on campus. He said he has friends who say their vote doesn't count or "voting is too dumb."

"They do have other important things to worry about," Hinzman said. "But I tell them that your vote does matter. And your vote determines what your future lives are going to be."

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Still, experts have cautioned that young voters need to be consistently targeted in voter outreach.

"What I think is really important is that campaigns and the people who are on the ground talking to with young people, listening to young people, are in tune with what's happening in those communities," said Abby Kiesa, deputy director at Tuft's CIRCLE.

Julia Perrotta, a 21-year-old civic engagement coordinator for IGNITE, has always been motivated to vote. She said it's barriers to voting, such as address changes in college and understanding where to get registered and vote, that prevent many of her peers from casting ballots, not a lack of interest.

"It's really important to break the stigma that young people don't care, because they do," Perrotta said. "Young people care so much about politics."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Midterms 2022: Will abortion, climate change get young people to vote?