Former President Donald J. Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts in a New York City trial, in which jurors took 9 hours to bring back a verdict. This historic trial represents the first time a former president has been convicted of a crime, let alone a felony. After the verdict was returned President Trump spoke to reporters in which he started with a very forward comment, “This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt” before he remarked that the trial “was done by the Biden administration to wound or hurt an opponent” finally saying that “we’ll fight til the end and we’ll win because our country’s gone to hell”.

The 2024 election seems to be the most tumultuous and, in some aspects, the most surprising election in recent years. This battle pits two adversaries who have known each other for decades: Joe Biden, the 81-year-old Democrat from Delaware who was its longest-serving senator and the vice president for Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, the 77-year-old diametrically opposed Republican from New York whose real estate business was sued in 1973 for racial discrimination. After the 2020 election conspiracies, which sowed seeds of Republican distrust among the Biden administration, the Biden administration has been carefully scrutinized, villainized, and sometimes even outright defamed by Trump’s Republican base. But in the face of Trump’s actions and his conviction in a criminal trial today, which has made him the only president in American history to be convicted of a crime, many believe that race should have no question as to who wins and who loses. However, new polling data paints a much more complicated picture from the perspective of the youth and ethnic minority constituencies. According to polling data from the Catalist, in 2020, Biden led African American voters, Hispanic voters, and voters younger than 30 years of age by 79, 35, and 23 points, respectively, as compared to Trump. However, in 2024, Biden has 3 points less than Trump for young voters, according to a poll by the New York Times. Almost every single poll taken this year as compared to 4 years ago, shows a significant and noticeable decrease in Black and Hispanic support for Biden’s campaign.

Since we were little, the routine has been to wake up, brush our teeth, hop on the bus, and get to school. But COVID-19 completely changed our whole lives, especially for kids. With the simplicity of online school, we lost the normalcy of interacting with teachers and other students. It could be the ease of catching up on missed work online or simply a lack of motivation to get up in the morning. Whatever the reason, there has been a substantial decrease in student attendance. 

Heading into November, many Democrats are quick to dismiss rural areas as too red to merit their attention. However, Alpine and Mendocino Counties prove otherwise: they surprisingly vote as liberally as San Francisco or Los Angeles despite how spread out their small populations are. We must learn from their example if we want to win in 2024.