I'm 23, so I'm in the 18-24 demographic.
I really do believe the youth vote will increase this year. But keep in mind a few things:
(1) People keep saying that youth didn't turn out in 2004. That isn't true. The youth vote surged in 2004 compared to 2000. However, the overall increase in 2004 meant that the youth share of the total vote wasn't much higher than in the past.
(2) Yes, plenty of young people don't care -- just like plenty of people OLDER than 24 don't care. The big reasons youth often doesn't turn out is that voter registration laws are often fairly restrictive. Out-of-state students in some states are not permitted to cast ballots locally. Absentee ballots can be difficult to get. Many young voters simply don't know all the rules or find out they aren't able to obtain an absentee ballot in time. Residency changes are frequent as well -- when I ran a campus GOTV in 2006, I found that interest was relatively high, but huge numbers of students didn't realize that they needed to re-register -- often they simply moved from 2004 to a dorm one block away and then found they were disenfranchised because their new address was not recorded by the election board.
(3) People keep freaking out about early voting showing low youth turnout. Youth tend to procrastinate and they're busy. Many of them simply will not turn out until election day.
Why am I still confident that youth turnout will be relatively high? Because of the following...
* 2004 turnout
>
http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=17696Washington, D.C. - 11/03/2004 - At least 20.9 million Americans under the age of 30 voted in 2004, an increase of 4.6 million over 2000, 1 and
the turnout rate among these voters rose from about 42.3 percent to 51.6 percent, a sharp rise of 9.3 percentage points, according to final national exit polls and an early tally of votes cast. Youth voter turnout was especially high in the contested battleground states.“This is phenomenal,” said CIRCLE Director William A. Galston . “It represents the highest youth turnout in more than a decade, 4 percentage points higher than the previous peak year of 1992.”
Because young people participated in considerably larger numbers than they had in the past, they kept pace with the higher turnout of Americans of all ages. Voters under the age of 30 constituted the same proportion of all voters as they did in 2000 (about 18 percent).
Young people voted at a much higher rate in contested, “battleground” states.2
In the ten most contested states, youth turnout was 64 percent, up 13 percentage points from 2000. In the battleground states, the youth share of the electorate was 19 percent. In the remaining 40 states and the District of Columbia , youth turnout was 47 percent and the youth share of the electorate was 18 percent. One explanation for the higher rates of participation in the battleground states is that there was greater voter outreach and political advertising in these states. Current research shows that youth participate when they are asked to do so.
* 2006 turnout
>
http://youngfeds.org/blog/?p=9Washington, DC – An estimated ten million young Americans under the age of 30 voted in Tuesday’s midterm elections, an increase of at least two million compared to 2002, according to exit polls and early published tallies of votes that are likely to increase as additional precincts and ballots are included. The preliminary data were analyzed by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), which is the nation’s premier research organization on the civic and political engagement of young Americans.
The estimated youth turnout rate or percentage of young eligible voters who cast votes also jumped from 20% in 2002 to at least 24% in 2006, an increase of at least four percentage points. Voters under the age of 30 accounted for 13% of all voters, which is an increase of about 2 points compared to the 2002 midterm elections.
* Turnout in the primaries
* Lastly, young people form a HUGE proportion of Obama's turnout operations and volunteer effort. Go to an Obama campaign office -- the offices are crawling with young people.
So yes, the youth will turn out. No, it's not going to swamp other voters, but I would expect it'll be about 55% and well over 60% -- possibly even 70% -- in battleground states. As an overall share of the vote, it'll probably rise one or two points to about 20%.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
