It’s hard to believe that Election Day came so quickly, after months of waiting. As proud as I am to have voted, I can’t help but feel this pit in my stomach, this weight on my chest. I didn’t want Tuesday to come and go, because then we would have to face whatever came next.
According to Forbes, a 2023 report in the Journal of Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology found “that elevated sociopolitical stress among college students was associated with poor psychological well-being.” In total, 61% of Americans say the election has negatively impacted their mental health.
I have seen this manifest in many people I know. But mainly, I have seen the most campaigning, advocacy, and support for voting and this election amongst fellow college students. Students were more invested in this election than ever. This is a good thing, but also I see it manifest in other emotions as well; stress, anger, and anxiety.
But the real question is why? Why now? As a college student myself, I have seen and felt the anxiety around my campus, and frankly, around the city of Boston, and can speak to three reasons election anxiety is so prevalent amongst my peers and college students across the country.
Isolation During An Election Cycle
As a college student, I spend most of my time away from home. Because I’m still registered to vote in upstate New York, it can be hard to feel a connection to the community I represent as a voter when I spend most of my time in Massachusetts.
This isolation can be frustrating, especially when it comes to local elections. Not being present in my hometown means I don’t experience the daily environment, the prevalent issues, and may not get to know local candidates. How am I supposed to know what change really needs to happen, or who I should be placing my vote behind?
Fellow Emerson student Bailey Carr explained how she has channeled a lot of her previous election anxiety into volunteerism, but being away from her home state of Georgia has caused more of a division.
“Being in Boston during 2024 has made me feel disconnected from the groundwork happening back home,” she said. “Georgia flipped blue in 2020 for the first time in nearly thirty years, and I get to claim a small part in making that happen. Now I can finally vote, and it doesn’t feel nearly as huge.”
This separation from community, or rather a division of time between your college and home, can make not only the political side of things difficult, but also affects what kind of support systems are available to you.
Coming to college, I not only felt the split from my family and friends, but the entirety of my home. That was all I had known, more or less, and having to adapt to new places and personal connections while struggling to reassess previous ones was tough. Elections are so tied to your identity and where you come from, and that has definitely pulled some of those feelings to the surface again.
Not Being Able To Easily Cast A Vote On Election Day
Something I found the most daunting about voting as a college student was the absentee ballot process. It seemed involved, stressful, and even unreliable. It took me a long time to get my ballot, and as of a few days ago, I know people who never received theirs.
Alli Marion, a friend of mine from New York, who attends Binghamton University, spoke to this. She has changed counties in order to vote in person and will most likely have to again for the next election after graduation if she moves.
“I was worried about messing around with absentee ballots and not taking the right steps,” she explained. “Sometimes, I feel that even as an intelligent individual, I’m still very uneducated about the voting process. That scares me because I know I have a lot of resources and people to go to help that others don’t.”
It’s true—civic education is not accessible to everyone in our country. In a study published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation in February 2024, 70% of Americans failed a “basic civil liberty quiz on topics like the three branches of government, the number of Supreme Court justices, and other basic functions of our democracy.” Only a quarter of those surveyed felt “very confident” they could explain how our system of government works.
In this case, a lot of election anxiety stems from the unknown. If one is not educated on a topic, that causes stress and leads to avoiding voting altogether. This is how I felt about absentee voting for a long time, but I was fortunate to have access to resources that helped me research, learn about the candidates on the ballot, and vote.
But what about those who can’t engage with accurate material? Those who don’t have access to tools that help to understand civics or even smaller processes such as registering to vote or voting by mail? Reflecting on our anxieties and seeing if they stem from a lack of education could not only help ourselves but also others as well who may be struggling in similar ways.
Societal Pressure To Engage In The Political Landscape.
Via a 2024 report, Forbes confirmed that college students are growing more engaged in our country’s political landscape and that voter registration among young people has skyrocketed.
This is not a new phenomenon—young people throughout history have made waves politically and socially, whether we’re referring to the anti-war movement, the Civil Rights Movement, or even recent liberation protests that have swept college campuses over the past year.
Many young people feel the weight of our country—and the world—on their shoulders because of the current political division.
An alumnus from my high school, Cade LaGoy, is now a graduate student at Sage Graduate Schools in New York State. He explained that he’s “working towards becoming a school counselor, so a lot of educational policies are in the forefront of [his] mind.” He’s hoping they “stay afloat to protect the rights of [him] professionally, and [his] future students.”
Marion elaborated, saying she thinks “politics can be fueled by so much hate, when what we should really be doing is protecting more vulnerable populations and advocating for basic human rights.”
Yet, we are constantly told how we are responsible for shaping the world to come. We feel as if we are the ones who need to protect ourselves and each other, because who keeps us safe? We keep ourselves safe.
With this pressure, there is stress and frustration in the fact that it seems like some people will never understand. The election magnifies all these feelings, and although it gives us an outlet for our voices to be heard, we still fear that we will never be loud enough.
So What Now?
Although the election has brought stress, anxiety, frustration, and plenty of other feelings, we each are going to have to find a way to cope with the results. Being aware of the aspects that may be causing this anxiety in you or those you know may give you better strategies in doing so, or at least that is my hope.
So in the weeks to come, take time for yourself, check in with those around you, and take a deep breath. Now that the results are in, we are going to have to each reckon with our own choice and what’s to come. It’s going to be a long road for everyone, regardless of your political views or standing. Despite all of the complex feelings in the election, I am proud of people for fighting for what they believe in and pushing people to get to the ballot box to do the same. I don’t think that will change anytime soon.
