Early Voting and the Youth Vote

Just a few days left until the election, and with the results looking increasingly obvious, the media is sifting around for a new angle on the story. One of those angles seems to be that young voters are underperforming at early voting locations. In particular, I'll point you to The Politico's Jonathan Martin, who says that young voters are underperforming in Florida, and Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic, who highlights this story noting that in Nevada young voters are turning out at a disappointing 14%:

While turnout statewide was nearly 25 percent through Sunday, it was just 20 percent among Hispanic voters, 14 percent among voters under 30 and 15 percent among those who didn't vote in the last three elections, according to an analysis of state early voting records through Sunday prepared by America Votes, an organization that works to mobilize voters.

It's completely unclear as to whether that means that 14% of all eligible youth have voted so far (which I think sounds pretty damn good), or that young voters have thus far made up 14% of the total early voters in the state (which is lower than I might hope, but by no means alarmingly so).

Before we all get worked up about this, I want to issue a big "calm down" to reporters, activists, and campaigns tracking the youth vote. Anecdotal evidence I'm hearing from people in the field is that early voting on campuses/among students is high, but that young professionals aren't showing up. Others suggest that young people actually prefer to vote on election day in person rather to at an early voting location or via absentee ballot.

Before we go putting the cart before the horse and declaring the youth vote a failure before we even get to E-Day, let's take a look at what we actually know to be true:

• We know that youth turnout rose in 2004, rose again in 2006, and was double, triple, and in some states quadruple previous turnout during the primaries.
• We know that Senator Obama and independent youth organizations have worked tirelessly to register new, young voters this cycle.
• Most importantly, we know that when young people are registered to vote, they turnout in numbers that are comparable to older registered voters. In 2004, 81.6% of all registered youth actually cast their ballot.

At this point, anything beyond that is pure speculation. Like I said yesterday, let's wait until all the ballots are cast before we start pre-emptively sizing up youth turnout and creating false narratives that will need to be overturned in just a few days.