Student voters may bridge a narrow gap between the Democratic incumbent and the Republican challenger in today's U.S. House election.
"Students are going to represent more than 10 percent of what it's going to take to win," said U.S. Rep. Lynn Rivers (D-Ann Arbor). "That could have a significant impact on the election."
Rivers said about 230,000 votes are expected in the 13th district today, about 116,000 of which are needed to win the election.
While the Ann Arbor campus is traditionally a Democratic stronghold, both Rivers and GOP challenger Joe Fitzsimmons have been campaigning hard for student votes this year. Rivers' troops are launching a Get Out the Vote campaign to remind her Democratic supporters to vote, and Fitzsimmons has recruited members of the campus chapter of the College Republicans in an effort to pull votes from Rivers' base in Ann Arbor.
"We are doing so well in ... Wayne County that we are able to go into what has traditionally been Lynn Rivers' base," said Jeff Timmer, Fitzsimmons' campaign manager. Timmer said the Fitzsimmons campaign concentrated on Ann Arbor in this past week before the election.
Republicans on campus have made a visible resurgence this year, with active campaign volunteers and the largest College Republicans mass meeting in several years.
"We found a lot of surprising support on the campus," Timmer said. "The student body on the whole has a reputation of leaning more liberal than conservative."
The youth vote can be an attractive voting faction to target because it is more "volatile" than other groups that usually turn out at the polls, said University political science Prof. John Kingdon.
"They can be swayed more than some other voter blocks," Kingdon said.
The student body contains more than 30,000 potential voters, but a significant number of students are not registered in Ann Arbor, and student turnout is historically low. Voice Your Vote, a student-initiated nonpartisan voter registration campaign on campus, added 6,500 local students to the voter pool this fall.
The University's impact will be felt more than in previous years because of "those 6,500 people who now have a say in who's going to become the next congressperson, the next mayor," said Voice Your Vote Co-Chair Mona Hanna.
"If we get all 6,500 students we registered and more, that will really push Lynn over the top," said Jae Jae Spoon, chair of the campus chapter of College Democrats.
However, College Republicans President Nicholas Kirk said numbers are so tight that it is "too close to call" whether the student vote will impact the Rivers-Fitzsimmons race.
"Both Democrats and Republicans agree that it will be a very close race," Kirk said.
Despite the attention the Fitzsimmons campaign has given the campus, Rivers' party affiliation and battle scars still give her an edge in the election, Kingdon said.
"Rivers won in this district in a very Republican year for the first time," Kingdon said. "You'd think she'd have some kind of advantage in 1996 in a less Republican year."
According to an exit poll conducted by The Michigan Daily in 1994, student voters choose Rivers over Republican opponent John Schall 73 percent to 26 percent.