The March For Our Lives protests held on Saturday calling for stricter gun control legislation has the potential to have an immediate impact on the political landscape and not only when many of the demonstrators reach the age to vote, University of Maryland sociologist Prof. Dana Fisher told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday.
She based her thesis on a study conducted on the demographics of the march in Washington, D.C., which showed that "While young people mobilized people to participate…. less than 10 percent of the people in the crowd were actually under the age of 18.
She pointed out that this means that more than "90 percent of the people there who actually can vote today."
Fisher added that over a quarter of the people participating in the demonstrations had never been to a protest before, which she said means that there is a large group of people who are potentially mobilizing around the issue of stricter gun control.
She also emphasized that 16 percent of the protesters were politically moderate.
Fisher said this was significant, because that was "the highest percentage of moderates that I've seen at any of these protest events" since the Women's March in January 2017, indicating that it was not only the same group of people who were already committed to the issue of gun control that were motivated to attend.
Fisher explained that the study was carried out by going through the crowds of demonstrators with tablets and conducting surveys of participants, which allowed for the quick tabulation of the information collected.