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63% of Penn students cite Roe v. Wade reversal as motivator to vote in midterms, DP poll finds
happening in the last few elections is falling on this midterm,” Rose said. “We are at a crossroads here. What type of politicians are going to be elected? Who is going to turn out to vote?”
This November, Democrats could lose control of the House of Representatives and the Senate to Republicans — who are looking to consolidate their power under the second half of President Joe Biden’s term. Nearly three-quarters of states have their gubernatorial seats up for election. And, on a more local scale, 88 of the United States' 99 state legislatures will hold their elections this year.
Due to Pennsylvania’s demographic breakdown, political science professor Matt Levendusky said that the state “has been and will continue to be a swing state,” leading to high-profile elections with national importance this year.
Senate
The U.S. Senate currently sits at a 50-50 split, with Vice President Kamala Harris acting as the tiebreaker vote, so the results from any state could shift the balance of power for the next two years.
After Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection following his current term in the Senate, a wide range of candidates positioned themselves to fill the vacancy. Pennsylvania's competitive primary election has left Republican Mehmet Oz to face Democrat Lt. Gov. John Fetterman on the general election ballot.
Rose said that candidates on both sides of the aisle have made congressional control a main component of their campaign.
Pennsylvania's Senate seat has the highest chance to be flipped to the Democrats, according to College and Wharton sophomore Joshua Frazier — a political director for Penn College Republicans. When the balance of power in the Senate is so close, he said, every election matters even more, and — for Republicans — this election represents an opportunity to change the current status quo.
“We've currently seen the failure of the past two years,” Frazier said. “Democrats have controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House, and this is the muck and mire that we are currently in economically. We need to change it by electing Republicans.”
College senior and Penn Democrats President Emilia Onuonga agreed that these midterms are “one of our country’s most important elections,” but highlighted the need for candidates who are in support of protecting reproductive rights on the federal level.
Onounga said that Fetterman is the “best candidate in the race right now” because he has reliably been in favor of protecting abortion access for years.
While Onounga said she believes that stances on abortion will be a primary reason that college-aged voters will go to the polls this November, she said that there are many other issues that the Senate will address over the next two years that also require close attention, like student loan debt relief.
Levendusky said that Biden’s recently announced student loan debt relief plan, a program that provides eligible borrowers with full or partial discharge of loans based on their individual or family income, may be in jeopardy if Republicans take control of the Senate — explaining that executive actions “do not supersede legislation.”
“When the opposing party controls Congress, that makes [Biden’s] life that much harder because they can then take steps to block any of those actions,” Levendusky said.
Frazier said that he believes Fetterman is too liberal on important policy positions, including government spending and supervised injection sites. He said that in swing states, like Pennsylvania, the average voter tends to pick the candidate that is less extreme. For the Senate race, he said that this would point toward Oz.
“Oz tends to be the less far-leaning candidate,” Frazier said. “Normal, working-class Americans who are tired of political divides and not having healthy discourse want to see someone who will represent their voice and politics.”
Governor
With Gov. Tom Wolf’s (D-Pa.) term ending this year, Pennsylvanians will either elect Democrat Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro or Republican State Sen. Doug Mastriano as the state’s 48th governor this November.
While some governors push themselves into the national spotlight for specific issue areas of concern, Rose said that they tend to act more locally with policies catered to the specific state.
Onounga said that Mastriano’s view on abortion, offering no exception for incest, rape, or protecting the life of the mother, are “extremely harsh.”
“It is going to be the governors who are deciding restrictions and potentially enacting bans on individual's right to choose to have an abortion,” Onounga said. “So it is even more important that we have people going out and voting to protect this right.”
While Frazier said that Mastriano’s policy positions tend to be more extreme than Shapiro’s views, he said that it is important to recognize that college students’ views are not representative of the views of the average American.
“Students' views on abortion at Penn are over overwhelmingly one-sided relative to the rest of the nation,” Frazier said. “Republicans at the national level do not want to completely ban it at all. We just want to have a conversation about the normal regulations.”
Besides reproductive health freedoms, Levendusky explained that Shapiro and Mastriano also differ on their views for general spending and voting access.
For example, he said that Pennsylvania's Act 77 — which allowed mail-in ballots — originally passed with bipartisan support and little controversy. Now, however, if Republicans in the legislature tried to remove it, Shapiro would veto this legislation while Mastriano would actively try to support it.
Outside of specific policy beliefs, Onounga said that it is “crazy in and of itself” that this is a decision between Shapiro and an “insurrectionist,” referring to Mastriano.
Mastriano attended the Jan. 6 rally for Trump — who has endorsed Mastriano’s candidacy — and he more recently spoke with the congressional committee investigating the insurrection.
National Discourse
As the first general election since the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last year, many Republicans have pushed election integrity as a key issue during their campaigns.
Levendusky said that years of academic research have pointed to the conclusion that there is no evidence of meaningful voter fraud in the United States.
Frazier agreed that large-scale fraud is unlikely in the United States and Americans can have faith in the results, but he added that it is unfair to shut down all claims of collusion or corruption without looking into the issue.
Outside of voter fraud, this year’s midterms also have made people question the future directions of the Democratic and Republican parties.
For the Democratic party, both Frazier and Onounga agreed that many Americans do not feel excited about Biden as their leader.
“Democrats, a lot of the time, have been playing it safe, which would be sticking with a more moderate position,” Onounga said. “It would be exciting if we had someone who is more hopeful and has more progressive ideologies.”
After many Trump-endorsed candidates won their primary elections earlier this year, Onounga said that it is “unfortunate” that this seems to be the direction of the Republican Party.
Frazier said he was less confident that the future of the GOP will lean toward Trump’s ideals. He said that the results from this year’s election will set the tone for the future of each party.
“As a nation, we are at a turning point where we don't really have a clear vision or a clear leader in either party,” Frazier said. “There just needs to be more young blood in each party.”
JARED MITOVICH, ANMOL DASH, JIN KWON, & KARAN SAMPATH Data Stories Reporters
A Daily Pennsylvanian poll found that Democrats Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro lead their Republican opponents by wide margins among Penn undergraduates in their respective races.
Respondents were asked to indicate which candidates they intend to vote for — if they are voting — in the Nov. 8 elections for Pennsylvania senator and governor. The survey also asked respondents to identify issues and events they considered to be the most pertinent in the midterm elections and to rate their approval of President Joe Biden.
Over 87% of the surveyed students who said they are eligible to vote also said that they will vote in the election, the vast majority of whom plan to vote for Fetterman for senator and Shapiro for governor. About 73% of respondents described themselves as Democrats and about 8% identified as Republicans. 18.1% of those surveyed described their political affiliation as Independent.
The anonymous survey, which ran from Oct. 11 to Oct. 26, garnered 346 responses from the Class of 2023 through the Class of 2026. An additional 26 responses identified themselves as graduate students or Penn faculty.
Josh Shapiro has wide lead over Doug Mastriano in Pa. governor race John Fetterman leads Mehmet Oz for U.S. Senate
Numbers represent what percent of students consider the issue to be among their three most important issues. "Who do you plan to vote for Pennsylvania senator?" broken down by school. Numbers represent percentages.
Josh Shapiro (D) 78% Josh Shapiro (D) 75%
Doug Mastriano (R) 7% Doug Mastriano (R) 11%
Not Voting 12% Not Voting 12%
Shapiro enjoys a 78% to 7% lead over Republican candidate State Sen. Doug Mastriano. Across all four undergraduate schools, Shapiro has the highest rate of support among students in the School of Arts and Sciences.
A similar story is evident in the Pennsylvania senate race. Fetterman has the support of three in four respondents. Republican senate nominee Mehmet Oz, a 1986 Wharton MBA and Perelman School of Medicine graduate, performs a few percentage points better than his counterpart in the governor's race, Mastriano.
Marc Trussler, the director of data sciences at the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies, told the DP that the results of the survey were "broadly what I would expect," noting that young people and people with higher levels of education — like Penn students — are generally more supportive of Democratic candidates. "Those two things combined would lead us to believe that Penn students would be more supportive of Democratic candidates, and that's exactly what we're seeing here," Trussler said.
