On a hot Saturday afternoon, Joey Chavez canvassed a neighborhood of Los Banos, a small city on the west side of Merced County.

Rachel Livinal

The Merced FOCUS

He sported a bright orange campaign T-shirt for Congressman John Duarte and tan cargo shorts. Campaign flyers spilled out of his huge pockets.

“You don’t have to carry them in a tote, you don’t have to carry them in your hands,” Chavez, 22, said.

Chavez is president of the North Valley Young Republicans. He organized the event that brought 25 members from all different regions in the statewide organization to knock on Los Banos’ doors in support of the Republican incumbent in California’s 13th Congressional District. Some drove as far as six hours.

But he knows many young people aren’t that motivated about voting.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if people my age are disaffected this election cycle and by and large aren’t going to turn out even for the presidential race,” Chavez said.

Young voter turnout across the U.S., including in this district, has historically been low. But this year, youth voter registration has surged nationwide. Voter guide website vote.org has registered more than 300,000 people to vote since President Joe Biden withdrew from the race in July. Most are under 35 years old.

In counties that make up the 13th Congressional District – which includes Merced and parts of Madera, Stanislaus, Fresno and San Joaquin – about a third of registered voters are between 18 and 35 years old.

Their votes could make a difference in this district, a swing district in the northern San Joaquin Valley. In the last general election, in 2022, Duarte beat Democratic challenger Adam Gray by 564 votes. Youth turnout for that race, according to Cal Matters, was only 23% in 2022.

The race is one of the most highly contested in the nation because it has the opportunity to flip power in the House of Representatives, and in Congress as a whole. Since the U.S. House only seats five more Republicans than Democrats, California’s congressional swing districts like CA-13 have increasingly become more important.

Chavez is just hopeful young voters can be energized to vote in larger numbers for the general election.

“We’re all starting life, but a decent amount of us, I think, are disenfranchised and need to be told that there is a path out of the darkness,” Chavez said.

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Who’s Running? Many Nearby College Students Don’t Know, or Don’t Care

Duarte is a farmer whose votes against stricter immigration policies paint him as a moderate Republican. His Democratic opponent, Gray, is a former state Assembly member whose platforms to secure the Valley’s water and support new programs for law enforcement also show him leaning toward the center.

Many local college students have never heard of either candidate. That includes Vitaliy Melnychuk, who on a recent morning was training to get his commercial drivers license at Madera Community College.

Melnychuk, 25, knows he’s voting for presidential candidate Donald Trump in November.

But he was less familiar with candidates in this district.

After being told the winner of the race could influence the majority in the House, he said he would definitely vote for the Republican.

Some other students in Madera were more left-leaning, but few of them were informed about local races beyond the mailers and ads they’d watched or collected from both candidates.

Yasmin Miranda, a 19-year-old student at Madera Community College, said she thinks most young voters won’t do their research before heading to the ballot box and will simply check the name with the “Dem” or the “Rep” next to it.

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“I feel like they choose who their political party is and they don’t really focus on the policies, which I do think is a little dangerous,” she said.

Issues mentioned among students represented a mixed bag of political ideologies, including abortion and immigration. Almost everyone KVPR spoke to mentioned concern about inflation — specifically gas prices.

At UC Merced, 43 miles away from Madera, students cared less about gas prices. Many who spoke to KVPR didn’t even care about voting.

Mcknz Trampe said she initially wasn’t planning on voting at all, but that she now plans to vote for Gray after learning what he’s done for her campus. Gray is a lecturer at the Valley’s only UC, and helped secure $200 million dollars in 2021 for a new Medical Education Building being built there.

“I’ve never voted before,” Trampe, 19, said, sounding enthused. “So I’m hoping that I will this year, and try to make a change.”

Students at UC Merced said education and immigration are top of mind, and some said they wouldn’t vote locally but were already registered in their hometowns out of county.

Another political group on campus, the Young Democratic Socialists at UC Merced, also expressed disinterest in the race because they believe neither candidate is focused on their primary issue: ending the war in Gaza.

The group has worked with another local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine to hold demonstrations and protests since last year’s Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, which prompted the war.

“The most prominent issue right now is dealing with the conflict in Palestine,” said Devlan Smith, the chair of the chapter.

Neither Gray nor Duarte mention the war on their campaign websites. Duarte voted for a bill last November that provided military aid to Israel against Hamas.

The disinterest from students rings true by Verania Vizcarra-Sanchez’s observations. The president of the Young Democrats chapter at the UC, Vizcarra-Sanchez was out on campus almost every day, setting up a tent with some of Gray’s campaign workers to register people to vote.

She said students cared more about the food offered at their tent than the ballot.

“Everybody wanted a donut so they were lining up,” she said, with a chuckle.

The number of students they’ve signed up varies from day to day. But she still thinks it pushes them further into the voting process.

“Getting them to register to vote is the first step and that makes it easier for them to get out there and vote, whether it’s by mail or in person,” she said.

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Civically Engaged Youth Push Forward

Civically engaged young people from both parties believe every vote will count in this race, and the candidates think so, too.

“If you think about the fact that there’s over 9,000 students (enrolled) at UC Merced alone, not to mention Stanislaus State, Merced College and other facilities with young voters, there’s a huge opportunity,” Gray told KVPR. “You can imagine if all 9,000 students at UC Merced decided to vote, they could have a huge impact.”

Gray said college students are just learning to vote, which may make it feel less important to them. But he said he thinks everyone should have the chance, which is why his campaign has tried to register young people.

Duarte told KVPR he thinks there will be a lot of engagement from young people, despite the historical lack of enthusiasm.

“A lot of young kids in the Valley are looking at this election very seriously because it’s going to impact their lives, if we don’t get back to an abundance agenda that drills American oil, gets water on the farms, builds the infrastructure we need and attracts companies to come make jobs where they live and where they can begin their lives,” he said.

At a restaurant in Los Banos, Young Republicans reflected on their sweaty day of canvassing and the weeks left before the election.

“We need to have a heavy impact from young voters like myself,” said Shawn Danley, a canvasser who drove up from Hanford. “I’m 18. This is going to be my first election I’m ever going to vote in.”

Danley, like other Young Republicans members, believe they can get more engagement if they highlight the problems they think young people want solved, like a lack of job opportunities and affordable housing. That’s why so many came out to Los Banos that weekend, including Ariana Assenmacher, the chair of the statewide organization.

Like Danley and Joey Chavez, she believes young voters will turn out if they’re given a push by other civically engaged youth, as well as messaging that is directed to their demographic.

“You have people fleeing California because there are not opportunities here for us,” said Assenmacher, who came to Los Banos from Los Angeles. “So, young people are coming to the table and speaking up with their views of what they want to see accomplished.”

About the Author

Rachel Livinal is the Higher Education Reporter for The Merced Focus.