npr:

Opening on-campus early voting sites, installing a practice voting booth with sample ballots and throwing election turnout parties: These are some of the ways college campuses across the country are trying to get students to vote in Tuesday’s midterm election.

And analysts expect those efforts will help; new research shows young people plan to vote in record numbers. But keep in mind, the records are low: 2014 marked the lowest youth turnout and voter registration rates in about 40 years.

“We have nowhere to go but up,” says Nancy Thomas, a researcher who studies college student voter participation at Tufts University.

Forty percent of 18- to 29-year-olds say they will “definitely vote” in the 2018 midterm election, according to the Harvard Institute of Politics’ most recent national youth poll. That’s compared to 26 percent who said the same in 2014.

But just because a student says they’ll vote, doesn’t mean they’ll actually cast a ballot on election day, says John Della Volpe, the institute’s director of polling. Still, it’s possible youth activism, which Thomas says increased after the 2016 election, will motivate even more students to vote. It’s certainly already motivated more young people to register, Della Volpe says.

4 Myths About College Students And Voting

Illustration: Franziska Barczyk for NPR