According to a recent Generation Lab poll aimed at understanding the issues college students are most focused on, health care reform, education funding, economic fairness, racial justice, civil rights, climate change and gun control are at the top of their lists. The conflict in the Middle East ranks last among their top concerns, trailing behind immigration policies as well as national security and terrorism.
Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman isn’t at all surprised that college students seem more focused on domestic matters related to the economy than foreign policy. Pakman analyzes what impact this finding may have on this year’s presidential election.
Now let’s get to the rubber meeting the road. Is it still possible and plausible that it will make a difference? Well, when the election is expected to be as close as this one is expected to be, even though Biden will probably win the popular vote by millions, the Electoral College could come down to two, three, four, five states, with one to 500,000 votes making the difference in those two to five states. Anything can make a difference.
Did Hillary Clinton lose in 2016 because of Russian interference, or because of James Comey’s last minute press conference about Hillary’s emails, or because of Facebook campaigns? The answer is, when it is that close, when you have just a few states hanging in the balance on a few hundred thousand votes, any one of these issues can be a difference-maker.
So could the election come down to Michigan, and could Biden lose Michigan because in Michigan voters are particularly concerned with Israel-Gaza, even [though] in most of the country, they are not? Sure, that could absolutely happen.
And so when I see these numbers, I don’t see them as “forget about Israel, Gaza, it doesn’t make a difference.” It’s reinforcement that domestic issues for most voters loom much larger than international and foreign policy issues. But it is also a reminder that the president should have some kind of coherent policy when it comes to all of these issues because they are the most important issue for some voters.
