An informal campus poll shows 36% of students do not know which of Maryland’s U.S. Senate candidates they will vote for in November.
In a poll of 50 students, 18 said they do not know who they want to vote for. That compares with nine who said they will vote for Democrat Angela Alsobrooks, the Prince George’s County executive, and seven who said they will vote for former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican.
Sixteen said they will not vote.
Political science professor Dan Nataf said the numbers do not surprise him, noting that 60% of young people did not vote for president in 2020.
“There’s a natural reluctance to engage [in politics] … because, you know, politics kind of labels you, and some people may feel that they don’t want to be labeled with partisan tinge,” Nataf, director of the college’s Center for the Study of Local Issues, said. “The fact that they’re young kind of makes political involvement, you know, a novelty.”
Second-year computer engineering student Joseph Jackson, who said he does not plan to vote this year, said he is “mostly disenchanted” with the political system.
“I might just write in, I don’t know … that guy who wears, like, a boot on his head [Vermin Supreme],” Jackson said.
Darian Moya Perez, a second-year communications student, said she is “just not educated in politics overall.”
“I just don’t really care for politics,” Moya Perez, who said she has no plans to vote, said. “I don’t feel like educating myself about it … [but] I feel like I probably should care because, you know, it’s something that affects all of us as a whole.”
Among those who said they plan to vote for Maryland’s next U.S. senator, some are undecided.
Third-year entrepreneurship student Zachary Lawrence, an undecided voter, said he hasn’t done enough research to make a decision.
Third-year entrepreneurship student Cameron Millar, who plans to vote for Alsobrooks, said, “I would prefer the Democrats because the Republican party is very anti-women, anti-LGBT [and] anti-people of color.”
Second-year student Phillip Michaels, who plans to vote for Hogan, said he met the former governor because his dad used to work with him.
“I believe he is going to do his best,” Michaels said.