The 2024 presidential election is breaking all kinds of records. It’s the most expensive race in U.S. history, with both campaigns on track to spend nearly $16 billion.
This election is also causing more angst among voters than any in recent history.
About 77% of people surveyed by the American Psychological Association about stressors in 2024 cited the future of the country, and 69% cited the presidential election specifically. That’s up from the 68% of respondents who worried about the 2020 election and 52% who cited the 2016 election that year.
What's more, 72% of adults said they worried that the election results this year could lead to violence, and 56% said they believed the results could be the end of democracy as we know it in the U.S.
Voters in Texas are feeling anxious, too. And they’re finding different ways to cope with it.
The future of the country
Like many of the adults surveyed by the APA, Janet Ekezie, 28, worries the presidential election could decide the future of democracy.
“There’s so much at stake for democracy, identity, who we are as people,” Ekezie said. “Even if people chose to vote or not, there are so many ways these things could go.”
Ekezie is studying public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She has been following the election closely because the results could affect her personally.
She recalled how, after Trump was elected in 2016, she felt more nervous about being in public than ever before.
“I remember thinking: I have to travel at specific hours of the day, I can’t leave my car after a certain point in the night,” Ekezie, a Black woman, said. “I felt relatively physically unsafe because of the color of my skin and what I represented as a person. In terms of my general safety ... I felt like my existence was in jeopardy.”
Ekezie has been taking action to cope with her anxiety. She has been attending political events both on and off campus and encouraging her friends to vote.
She’s also started hosting her own podcast, called “I Am...”, where she invites politicians outside of Texas to talk about politics and identity. In an episode from August, she talked to Kenny Nguyen, a member of city council in Broomfield, Colorado.
“I was able to host a person from a different state, and we talked about the broader national issues,” Ekezie said. “It was a great way, within the small platform I have, to engage people in the process.”
Therapists and other experts in anxiety recommend similar coping measures, since the condition stems from feeling a lack of control.
“I can choose to ruminate or even go as far as being upset with an outcome I don’t agree with, but in my current state, I can’t control everything,” she said. “As long as I have put my best foot forward, I can also sleep at night.”
Turning down the noise
Kerry O’Malley Gleim, 24, said she’s anxious about voter turnout, especially among her generation.
Glenn, who lives in Dallas, said systems like the Electoral College and gerrymandering make people feel like voting isn’t even worth it.
“I feel like people have been using these loopholes to try and change these systems to work in their favor,” O’Malley Gleim said. “Both parties are totally guilty of this, too. But I feel like that has definitely disincentivized people.”
She said she’s also been feeling pressure to stay hyper-informed. Gleim said she felt that in order to have a conversation on just about anything, she needed to consume news about everything.
“That pressure also contributes to not wanting to vote because ... if I’m not informed about everything, then how can I vote?” she said. “Am I being an informed voter when I don’t know everything about everything?”
Gleim said others Gen Zers feel the same way, especially since politics have become so divisive. She said there’s greater pressure to be politically active, especially through social media.
As a result, she’s scaled down her social media use. She stopped using TikTok last November, and she deleted the Instagram app on her phone so that she can only access it on a desktop. She also curated her feed to focus more on people she knows so she’s not constantly doomscrolling.
Evidence of the correlation between anxiety and social media is still mostly anecdotal, but experts have found that young people report high rates of poor mental health linked to social media use.
“I feel like my relationship to social media has definitely shifted to be more focused on being a connector between myself and the people I care about, as opposed to a way to engage with the world,” Gleim said.
Building community
Marianne Richardson has to pay attention to the news for her job. As a 32-year-old research consultant in Austin, she reads local and national news constantly throughout her day. She describes herself as a news nerd.
“I have less active anxiety about the election,” Richardson said. “That’s also because my life right now is a lot more stable than it has been for the last five years.”
But she knows loved ones who are anxious about political polarization, so she’s trying to build more community around her.
“I care a lot about our special American values, and I think they make our communities better,” she said.
After being isolated during the pandemic, she felt the urge to strengthen her ties to her own community. She joined the board of her local community garden, started improv classes, and looked for more hobbies and ways to make friends.
Anyone who suffers from anxiety will tell you it can be isolating. And experts say the way to combat the so-called loneliness epidemic in the U.S. is to surround yourself with others.
“People just want to collaborate on making the world better and making their communities better,” Richardson said. “There’s so much good that can happen in the world around me that doesn’t require us all to agree on everything.”
This story was done in collaboration with the Texas Newsroom. A second story on tips to cope with election anxiety will publish next.
Copyright 2024 KERA