As the 2020 election approaches, both parties are sinking money and time into college campuses, driven by the idea that students—often dismissed as low-turnout layabouts—could have a huge effect in a tight race in a swing state. The mega-campuses of the Brobdingnagian public universities and community colleges in states like like Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania are sometimes called “battleground campuses” by organizers and activists on the ground. “In an election that could come down to a point or two either way in Arizona or Wisconsin, turning out voters at ASU, University of Wisconsin-Madison and other college campuses in these states could easily make the difference,” said Andrew Baumann, a pollster for Global Strategy Group, a consulting firm that spent 2018 trying to figure out what makes the would-be college voter tick for Tom Steyer’s NextGen.

“It’s pretty clear that 2020 is going to shatter records for turnout given what we saw in 2018, the Virginia and Kentucky elections a couple of weeks ago, and what we’re seeing in every poll that asks about enthusiasm to vote or motivation,” Baumann said. “And the group that has the most room to grow is young people.” While young voters still turned out at lower rates than older voters in 2018, their rate of increase in turnout was, he says, “by far” the highest.

In the Trump era, college students are voting in record numbers. In 2018, 7.5 million college students who were eligible to vote went to the polls. That was a 40 percent turnout, more than double the rate four years earlier, according to researchers at Tufts University. At ASU, of the students registered to vote in the most recent midterms, 59 percent pulled a lever, compared to 27 percent in 2014.

And there are more young people now than ever.