NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

How does Northeastern vote?

One of the key projects of The Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life is the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE). The study uses records of more than 10 million college students from more than 1,200 institutions to create individualized reports on rates of student voter registration and voting.

With midterm elections just around the corner, now is a great time to read the NSLVE 2020 report about Northeastern student voting rates! This report contains three years of relevant topline data: 2016, 2018, and 2020.
In 2020, the rate of registered students who voted was 80%, and the Average Institutional Voting Rate (AIVR) among campuses in the study was 66%, which exceeded the rate of 53% from the prior presidential election. Turnout increases were widespread, with virtually all campuses (97%) seeing an increase from 2016.
The voting rate of Northeastern students for presidential elections in 2020 was 68.7%, an increase of 11% since 2016. The voting rate in the 2016 presidential elections was 57.7%. As our students become more politically engaged, we expect that future elections will have even higher turnouts.