Social Movements and Governing Power

March 2022

By Dr. Veronica Terriquez and Josefina Flores Morales

Voter turnout during midterm elections is consistently much lower than turnout in a presidential election year, when the presidential race draws a lot of media attention. Participation in midterm elections tends to be especially low among young eligible voters. Although they have much at stake in congressional, state, and local elections, young adults may be less aware of the implications of election outcomes than their older counterparts. The next US midterm election, in November 2022, presents an opportunity to activate young adults who remain undermobilized. This report shows patterns of voter registration and turnout in California for eligible voters aged 18–34 in the 2018 midterm election. Results are disaggregated by county to inform efforts to register and educate young voters.

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The Undermobilization of Young Voters in California: Tapping the Potential to Build Youth Political Power

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    Our work on immigrant integration and racial justice brings together three emphases: scholarship that draws on academic theory and rigorous research, data that provides information structured to highlight the process of immigrant integration over time, and engagement that seeks to create new dialogues with government, community organizers, business and civic leaders, immigrants and the voting public to advance immigrant integration and racial equity.

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    Social Movements & Governing Power

    ERI’s work in the area of governing power includes: conducting cross-disciplinary studies of today’s social movements, supporting learning and strategizing efforts to advance dialogues among organizers, funders, intermediaries, evaluators, and academics, and developing research-based social change frameworks and tools to inform—and be informed by—real-world, real-time efforts towards a vision of deep change.

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    In 2020, the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) and the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) merged to form the USC Equity Research Institute (ERI).

    The full list of publications published under our previous and current names can be found in our publications directory.

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