2006 midterms

Project Vote has released a new report on the final turnout breakdowns for the 2006 midterm elections: Representational Bias in the 2006 Electorate (pdf). The report contains some interesting, if not altogether unexpected, information about the breakdown of the youth electorate.

According to Project, Vote, despite ending a two decade decline (pdf) in turnout during midterm election, the youth vote came out at only half of its potential force in 2006, and that number itself hides the fact that voter registration among 18-29 year olds was still only at 51% of the eligible population.

The report also revealed some not unexpected disparities in voter turnout among different racial/ethnic groups. African American and Latino men continue to vote at much lower rates than their white counterparts, with women in those demographics performing substantially better. The most surprising piece of news was the extremely low rate at which young Asian American/Pacific Islander Americans voted - just 13% of eligible AA/PI young men came to the ballot box. That's pretty incredible since this is not typically a demographic that you hear a lot about, particularly in connection to voting rights and disparities at the ballot box. There is a whole sector of the youth electorate that apparently is not voting and has no one advocating on their behalf to increase their registration and turnout rates.

Project Vote's report illustrates the problem, but the organization is also working to push solutions. This weekend they published an op-ed on MyDD highlighting policy fixes such as election day registration, and laws criminalizing voter intimidation as just two of a number of policy proposals to solve this. Similar proposals have been endorsed by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Currently, there is some form of Election Day Registration legislation working its way through the legislature in 21 different states, and estimates by Demos suggest that such legislation could boost youth turnout by as much as 14%. This seems like one of the surest ways to increase the power of young people in our political system, erase the representational biases that Project Vote has identified.

I recognize that election day registration is not necessarily the most sexy issue, especially compared to Global Warming, the war in Iraq, Darfur, or any number of global catastrophes that seem to be piling upon one another. Yet the results of successful EDR camapigns in other states are so apparent, that I can't help but wonder why we don't see more visible campaigns on the part of progressive youth organizations to support these simple voting reforms.

An analysis by CIRCLE of recently released census data confirms that youth turnout was up in 2006 by 3% over 2002 levels, reaching 10.8 million. Still not at 1982 levels (which some folks predicted in October 2006), but the trend is clear. This is the second major election in a row where youth turnout significantly increased.

From a partisan, political standpoint, we've seen what that means: more Democrats in office.

Via an analysis in the New York Times, its apparent that this year's turnout increase was driven primarily by young voters:

The overall turnout rate, reflecting a percentage of voting age population, was 40.4 percent, compared with 39.7 percent in 2002, according to an Associated Press vote count and an analysis by American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate.

So overall turnout rate increased by less than 1%, yet the young voter turnout rate rose by 4% over 2002 levels.  So not only did the kids  turnout, and break democratic (as the graph below shows), but they also drove the overall turnout increase that we saw in the electorate as a whole.

Rock the Vote's Hans Reimer puts another spin on youth vote turnout in the piece by the Times, noting that the overall turnout number of young voters rose 25% over 2002 levels - from 8 million to at least 10 million (final number is still TBD.)

Also, Kos has anecdotal evidence of young voter turnout playing a large role in Wisconsin:

The controversial amendment easily passed Tuesday, with Wisconsin voters approving the ban by 59% to 41%.

But the measure clearly had an unintended consequence by sparking a larger-than-expected turnout, especially among left-leaning college students, who flooded their campus polling places.

I've had time to sift through what data is available, and just got off the media call held by Young Voter Strategies and CIRCLE. The bottom line is this - youth turnout increased yet again and millenials chose democrats over Republicans by 22 percentage points (60%-38%).

In Montana, where Jon Tester beat out Conrad Burns, I'm hearing that young voters made up 17% of the electorate and that their swing towards Democrats may have been the deciding factor in Tester's election.

If this is a wave election, that wave is being fueled by young voters and their growing allegiance to progressive politics.

Here's what we know so far based on exit polls, preliminary precinct reporting, and census data from March 2006:

Rather than post continuously as more exit polls are released and analyzed, I'm going to use this post to write rolling updates on new data. I'll write/post something comprehensive after the Young Voter Strategy media call tomorrow afternoon.

Update - 9:15 YVS is going to release more updates from exit polls at university precincts, but won't have any hard turnout numbers until tomorrow morning. So I'm taking the rest of the night to nurse my head cold. I'll be back tomorrow. Maybe I'll post again tonight if something really interesting rears its head.

Update - 7:15pm: YVS reports that their campus exit polls continue to show that turnout at Ohio State University and UW-Madison are surpassing 2002 levels.

I wish they had turnout numbers from non-university precincts too. I'm going to hunt around for some. Let me know if you find any.

6:15pm Young Voter Strategies just released their first projection of youth turnout, and it looks like turnout is up on campuses in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Maryland.

That's good news for Democratic Gubernatorial and Senate candidates like Sherrod Brown, Ben Cardin, Jennifer Granholm, Mike Hatch and Martin O'Malley.

Early numbers show significantly higher young voter turnout in a number of student-dense precincts; in fact, in four youth-dense precincts in Maryland, Michigan, and Ohio, student turnout at 2pm was already higher than the final vote count in that same precinct in 2002. Click here for the spreadsheet.

And in six of the University Wisconsin-Madison precincts (where tallies are reported by the hour), turnout at 11am was two to three times higher this year than at 11am in 2002. See chart below, and a news release from the PIRGs’ New Voters Project with more information and info on activities happening around the country. We’ll be gathering more precinct tallies and have additional information later in the evening.