Young voters in Philadelphia area gear up for presidential election after a busy month on the campaign trail
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Pa. (CBS) — CBS News Philadelphia is on your corner in Montgomery County, where some young voters are fired up, and one voter registration group said leaders are seeing a spike in new voter sign-ups in the past several weeks.
"Most people look forward to getting their driver's license at 16," said Matthew Schick of Abington. "I was certainly waiting for 18 to be able to vote."
He is 21 years old now, and just as excited to vote for former President Donald Trump and JD Vance in this year's presidential election. Schick said he is most concerned about crime and border security.
"To have a government that is tough on crime is going to be important both in terms of the border and then also the economy as well," Schick said.
Schick is one of more than 52,000 registered voters in Montgomery County between 18 and 24 years old. According to PA.gov, there are more than 27,000 registered Democrats in that same age group compared to nearly 14,000 Republicans. This is in a county that voted more than 2-to-1 for President Biden in the last presidential election.
Jonas Epstein of Bryn Mawr is 18 years old and plans to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in November. He said he was most concerned about climate change.
"If I want my kids to have the same great Earth that I have kind of been gifted with. We need to ensure that we can be reusable and be renewable," Epstein said.
These are some of the same concerns seen by the nonpartisan group called New Voters. This non-profit Gen-Z led organization is based in Pennsylvania. Earlier this month, the group held its GradFest celebrating 200 graduating high school seniors who registered to vote. Anish Garimidi said young voters are sharing the issues that are moving them to the ballot box.
"And people talked about gun control, climate change, the Trump campaign … some people mentioned abortion rights," Garimidi said.
New Voters founder and president Jahnavi Rao revealed who is running is also a concern to young voters. She said registrations doubled after Mr. Biden dropped out of the race and the attempted assassination of Trump.
"There's been just a massive, with the events of last month, just surge in interest from young people across the aisle," Rao said.
New Voters expects to see even higher numbers in the coming weeks. The group has registration events scheduled throughout the country.