2002

Today, we all head to the polls to choose our representatives and hopefully change the direction of our country. One voting block that is sure to play an important - and expanding - role in today's election is young voters.

In 2004, the media completely botched the story about young voter turnout. An article in the AP mistakenly reported young voters share of the electorate instead of the hard turnout numbers. In 2004, youth turnout as a share of the electorate only rose 1-2% points due to an overall turnout increase of 4% among the voting population. Young Voter strategies has more on the difference between share and turnout here. (pdf)

The result of this error was a complete dismissal of youth turnout for months, and a reinforcement in the minds of many politicians and the media that youth remained apathetic. We know that's not true.

The real story, we now know, was that youth turnout increased by 11% over 2000 turnout levels, and that young voters chose Kerry over Bush by a 10 point margin. This was the largest increase since 18 year olds were granted the vote in 1972.(pdf)

To make sure that this little piece of electoral history doesn't repeat itself, I'd like to establish some baseline info about youth turnout - what to look for, and what we can expect today: