turnout

The October 2009 CIRCLE report has been released about college students and voting. Here are some of the findings:

• Students can be diligent voters with high turnout, both by absentee ballot and in local voting.
• Students who can vote in their home state or their college state are strongly influenced in that choice by the closeness of the presidential election.
• Even in the internet era, in-person voter drives reach many students who would not otherwise vote.

The report was based on a peer-to-peer voter drive done at Northwestern University during the 2008 election. During this voting drive, campaigners encouraged students from Presidential swing states to register back home as opposed to in Illinois. Students contacted by the campaign chose to register back home and vote absentee instead of locally by an 8:1 ratio. Of the students that registered through the drive, 80% voted.

I have mixed feelings about encouraging students to vote absentee over locally. For most students, the political decisions that are going to have the greatest effect on their lives will be made at the state and local level in their college district. State legislatures decide university funding, and that in turn determines tuition increases. City ordinances can have a big effect on students. Back when I represented students at Arizona State a number of student-opposed measures were passed through the Tempe City Council.

Encouraging students to vote back home in a swing state makes sense to the Presidential campaign, but it has it's cost in other political areas. I'm also concerned that this sends a message that the only really important election is the Presidential one every four years and discourages students from building the habit of voting locally and being an active and engaged part of the civic community.

The drive at Northwestern University, analyzed here, offered each student a choice of registering for local voting in Illinois (the college state) or for absentee voting in their home state. Absentee voting was encouraged for students from swing states. Students from non-swing states were mildly encouraged to vote in Illinois. Students from swing states showed a dramatic preference for absentee voting in their home state, over local voting in Illinois, by an 8:1 ratio. Even students from other non-swing states preferred absentee voting in their home state over local voting in Illinois by a 2:1 ratio.

What is troubling is that the students that were contacted that were not from swing states were only mildly encouraged to register locally. Once again this appears to be a situation where the campaign only cares about the Presidential election and ignores the importance of local races. While at the Presidential level it makes sense for people to vote in swing states, it doesn't make sense to not strongly encourage students to register locally when neither state is highly contested.

On the bright side, the campaign showed that students are reliable voters when engaged by campaigns, most effectively through peer-to-peer contact. It also showed that absentee voting drives are possible and can be effective.

A troubling finding of the report is that absentee voting is error-prone:

16% of applicants for absentee voting were not enabled to vote. In 1/3 of these cases, an error was made by the applicant, and in 2/3 of the cases the error was made by county boards of elections. Most errors by applicants could be prevented by adding minor annotations to the application forms.

However, even with the errors the success rate of the campaign was extremely high.

There is a lot of good information in the report, as well as an evaluation of the methods used by the absentee voter drive campaign. It's definitely a must read for people involved in organizing college students.

I'll end with a question for the comments: what are your thoughts on where students should be encouraged to register and vote?

Yesterday, the Washington Post endorsed a bill that would bring Election Day Registration to the District of Columbia:

IF YOU make it easier to vote, more people will vote. That has proved to be the case in states that have cleared away unnecessary hurdles to the ballot. And it is the premise behind a noteworthy proposal to reform elections in the District of Columbia.

The Omnibus Election Reform Act of 2009 aims to give more D.C. residents the opportunity to vote by allowing Election Day voter registration and eliminating restrictions on absentee and early voting. The bill, the brainchild of D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), also targets younger voters in two significant ways. For the first time, 16-year-olds would be able to pre-register, and 17-year-olds would be permitted to vote in primary elections if they would be 18 by the general election.

[...]

We hope that the D.C. Council adopts this bill, with one proviso. The provision to create an advisory council to the Board of Elections and Ethics needs to be rethought. Not only is the exact role of this board unclear, but there is a danger that its members, most appointed by the mayor and council, could politicize what must be an independent, nonpartisan process.

Kudos to D.C. for pushing forward this (small d) democratic reform, as well as making a point to bring more young voters into the process. As I've blogged in the past, approximately 81% of registered young voters cast their ballots each year. Voter registration really is the single biggest barrier to youth participation, and at the heart of what many youth vote skeptics typically dub "voter apathy." Apathy is not the problem. The problem is access, and voter registration reform is the solution.

In my view, though, this reform does not go far enough. EDR is a great way to open up the system, but why do we even need voter registration at all? What we need is a nationwide, automatic, universal registration system. Voter registration shouldn't be an opt-in system.

Fortunately, it looks like such a system is gaining in popularity and currently under study:

No state has yet to adopt universal voter registration. But the idea, common in European democracies, is the subject of a careful study by the Brennan Center for Justice and seems to be gaining traction.

The sooner the better. The evidence of fraud is miniscule, and the upside in greater participation is a public good that can't be ignored. If the government can send me my Selective Service card when I turn 16, they can send my my voter registration card when I turn 18.

Yesterday CIRCLE released their analysis of the 2008 Census Data, and they have revised their estimates on youth vote turnout. Here's the toplines:

• Overall youth turnout (18 - 29) was revised from an estimated 52 - 53% (based on exit polling data) down to 51.1%. This is still the third highest youth turnout since 18 year-olds were granted the right to vote:

• 22.4 million young Americans voted in November, 2 million more than in 2004.
• Turnout increase 2 percentage points over the 2004 turnout (49%) and 11 points over 2000 turnout levels (40%). It's also worth noting that young voters were the only age demographic to increase their turnout over 2004 levels.
• Turnout among young African Americans was the highest since 1972. 58.2% of young African Americans voted - the highest turnout for any racial/ethnic demographic since 1972.

• Finally, unlike every other state, youth turnout was higher in DC than turnout among voters over 30.

That's the good news, but it wasn't all roses. While the overall youth vote is continuing to trend towards higher and higher rates of participation, that participation is not evenly distributed throughout the youth population. Huge disparities in turnout still exist - particularly when it comes to educational attainment.

• Voter turnout among young people without college experience was at only 36% compared to 62% for those with some college experience.
• The turnout gap between men and women continued to widen in 2008. 54.9% of young women voted in November, compared to just 47.2% of young men.

So good news overall, but still a ways to go in some areas. We need to work on closing the gender and educational gaps in voter turnout, as well as work on increasing down-ballot participation. Part of that is voter registration reform, and part of it needs to be a greater commitment of resources towards registering and GOTVing these demographics.

Michael McDonald of George Mason University has a preview of the Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplement Data. McDonald confirms the increase in youth turnout in 2009, noting that the CPS data shows 51.1% of all young voters (18 - 29) turning out, an increase of 2.1 percentage points over 2004. McDonald also notes that young voters were the only age group to increase their turnout rate in 2008. I'll have much more on this tomorrow and when CIRCLE releases their own analysis of the data.

The Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, Voting and Registration Supplement confirms that African-American and youth voter turnout increased between 2004 and 2008. In all, it appears that the 2008 electorate became more representative of the American citizenry in that disparities in turnout rates among various demographic categories decreased between 2004 and 2008.

CIRCLE just released an update on youth turnout. They are estimating that youth turnout in 2008 increased by at least 2.2 million votes over 2004. Not all precincts are reporting, and there is still a lot of absentee and early votes to count, so it's highly possible that we will see that number rise.

Unfortunately, they are still not able to provide, with any certainty, hard numbers on the youth turnout percentage. They can, however predict that it will increase, and that increase will lie within a range of 1 to 6 percentage points. That would put youth turnout yesterday somewhere between 49.3 and 54.5%. To put that into historical perspective (pdf), the low end will represent the third highest youth turnout ever recorded, following only 1992 and 1972. The high end - 54.5% - will represent the second highest youth turnout ever, lagging only behind 1972, the year that 18, 19 and 20 year-olds were first granted the right to vote.

Preliminary CIRCLE projections show the turnout for young Americans (ages 18-29) is higher than in 2004, a year of significant increase, and is much higher than it was in 2000 and 1996. [...]

An estimated 21.6 million-23.9 million young Americans voted in Tuesday’s presidential election, an increase of at least 2.2 million compared with 2004, according to national exit polls, demographic data, and projections of total numbers of votes cast. CIRCLE projects the youth voter turnout will be between 49.3% and 54.5%, an increase of 1 to 6 percentage points over CIRCLE’s estimate based on the 2004 exit polls. The 2004 election was a strong one for youth turnout, reversing a long history of decline. [...] Depending on the final vote tally, this year’s youth turnout could be the second highest since 1972 (55.4%).

For those who think those numbers are small, I'd remind you that expectations were unrealistically high, and these numbers are very much in line with what I was thinking last week. It's also worth noting that 2004 was a year where we saw a huge increase in youth turnout, and to build on top of that is in itself a big achievement.

But almost 24 hours since the first polls closed, the major story about the youth vote is not the turnout numbers, but the record-breaking margins by which young voters selected Senator Obama over his opponent. Sixty six percent of young voters picked Senator Obama, vs. just 32% for John McCain. That 34 point margin is the largest ever recorded since exit polls first began tracking such data in 1976. It's also on the higher end of all the polling data we saw prior to the election

Not only were young voters highly unified behind the Democratic candidate, they were much more likely to vote Democratic than the electorate as a whole, and the degree to which the youth vote differed from the popular vote was greater yesterday than at any time in the past 30 years.

This is the manifestation of the progressive future majority, predicted by NDN and a handful of books, that today's young voters will bring to fruition: a massive demographic shift to the left brought about by the largest, most progressive generation in American history.

I know that everyone is turning their eyes towards policy - passing progressive energy and health care legislation, and ending the war. That's why we fought for so many years to elect more and better Democrats. But let me make the case for why we cannot let up and take young voters for granted; why this needs to be just the beginning of a longterm shift in terms of how the Democratic Party does business.

Less than half of the Millennial generation were eligible to vote yesterday, and all Millennials will not be in the electorate until 2016. We know that partisanship is a loyalty that develops early in life (pdf), usually during the first three major elections in which one participates. What the Obama campaign, and many others, did yesterday was lock in the loyalty of those who first participated in 2004. That's only a small fraction of the Millennials, and we have a long way to go still. I've written about this effect before, calling it the first of many thirds - the idea that engaging youth is a rolling process in which we are always ushering a new generation towards that third election that locks in partisan loyalty.

Despite all he has accomplished, Obama's faith in young voters, and his extensive efforts to engage those voters, remains the exception, not the rule, among Democratic operatives, campaigns, and the state parties. Back in 2004, a survey of state party leaders found that more considered engaging senior citizens to be vital to the long-term health of the party than did those who thought young voters were important to the future of the party. While I'm sure that the state parties have improved their record since 2004 - some more than others - young voters still remain an underfunded afterthought among party officials and cash-strapped campaigns.

That's the definition of short sighted, especially following an election where young voters actually outperformed the 65+ demographic. A simple look at the partisan youth numbers during the 80s can show us the foolishness of such shortsighted thinking.

In the 80s, Ronald Reagan appealed to young voters, commanding their loyalty by impressive margins, in part through a reinvigorated, and well-funded, College Republican organization. Those voters remained some of the most conservative in the electorate. But the Republican Party failed to continue their outreach to young voters and by 1992, the youth vote was split between the three candidates - Clinton, Bush and Perot. Today, the College Republicans are basically an irrelevant direct marketing scam whose rising stars are a national embarrassment. Senator McCain never had a youth operation beyond the blog written by his own daughter, and he banked his campaign on an appeal to those supposedly reliable older voters. We've all seen how that worked out.

Should Obama's youth outreach remain the exception, not the rule, this same atrophy could befall the Democratic Party and erode its now record-breaking youth support. Certainly not now, and perhaps not while Obama remains in office, but eventually, and perhaps before the partisan loyalty of the Millennials become fixed.

So while we all continue to pour over the exit polls from last night, and while we all wait for more solid data on youth turnout, I'd like to plant this seed in the minds of progressive activists, democratic consultants and staffers with the DNC and state parties: don't let up. In fact, step it up. Keep working to engage young voters. Senator Obama showed the way: peer to peer contact, speak to their issues, don't cut them off your walk lists, and use the efficiencies afforded by new technology to engage them on their own terms.

Over the next few months we will be inundated with studies determining the effectiveness of a wide range of these new tactics - such as cellphone phone banking to text message reminders. Some of these tactics will scale down to the smallest race, others won't. But if we want to continue to build on the gains we've seen among young voters, we must work to integrate young voter outreach - in all its forms - into all of our campaigns, and all levels of the party.

Rock the Vote presents some encouraging, if VERY preliminary, and purely anecdotal evidence, that youth turnout is going to be higher this year than in 2004:

Washington, D.C. – Reports from youth-dense precincts in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, and Nevada indicate that voter turnout among 18-29 year-olds has already surpassed 2004 levels. With the exception of the University of Nevada which is just 49 votes shy as of 4:00 pm. Here are the numbers:

Drexel University (Philadelphia)
2008(as of 1pm): 500 votes cast
2004 total: 425 votes cast

Virginia Tech (Blacksburg)
2008 (as of 3pm): 2,465 votes cast
2004 total: 2,069 votes cast

Florida State University (Tallahassee)
2008 (as of 3pm): 721 votes cast
2004 total: 625 votes cast

University of Nevada, Las Vegas
2008 (as of 4pm): 811
2004: 860

Before you start jumping for joy or writing ledes about increased youth turnout, keep this in mind:

• This is still very preliminary evidence
• This is limited to only 4 voting locations
• This is limited to college students, who make up only 22% (pdf) of all eligible young voters this year.
• College students vote at much higher rates than non-college youth, who make up a larger portion of the electorate.

So with those enormous caveats in mind, this is encouraging.

Note - this post got front-paged on Daily Kos.

In 2004, youth turnout was wildly misreported - in the media and in the blogosphere. That reporting was summed up most aptly by this famous quip from the late Hunter S. Thompson:

"Yeah, we rocked the vote all right," quips Hunter S. Thompson, the gonzo journalist himself. "Those little bastards betrayed us again."

Of course Thompson, and the media reports, were wrong. The youth vote did turnout and was the only age demographic to vote for Kerry over Bush.

This year, expectations for the youth vote are higher than ever - perhaps unrealistically so - and the expectations game is already beginning to result in "youth don't vote" stories in local and regional media. For instance, in Florida, the Orlando Sentinel had this to say:

Young people are turning out in disproportionately low numbers. Though major registration efforts this year boosted their totals to nearly 25 percent of the total electorate, voters younger than 35 represent only 15 percent of early voters, making them the worst-performing demographic group in the analysis.

This is incredibly misleading. Here's what the Young Democrats of Florida found when they ran the numbers on early voting in Florida:

According to the Florida voter file, (which should be viewed as relatively but not 100% accurate) in 2004, approximately 392,888 voters between 18-35 voted early or absentee. So far 499,867 voters between 18-35 have voted early or absentee this year. This is a 27 percent increase over 2004.

What happened was a common mistake in which the media used misleading, and not terribly informative, "share of the electorate" data to describe youth turnout instead of more accurate figures like the hard number of votes or % turnout of eligible voters. Unfortunately, such mistakes are all too common in reporting on youth turnout.

The following is a hard nosed look at what we might realistically expect on Tuesday, a list of common mistakes the media makes when reporting on youth, and some tips to help activists, journalists, and bloggers alike accurately assess youth participation on Election Night.

What to Expect When Expecting on Election Day:

Youth Turnout Will Likely Be Higher Than in 2004:

There are three measures of youth participation:

• Total Number of Votes: That's pretty self explanatory.
• The Turnout Rate: This is the percentage of all eligible young voters who cast a ballot.
• The Share of the Electorate: The percentage of the entire voting electorate between the ages of 18 and 29.

This year, the hard number of ballots cast by young voters and the turnout rate are both highly likely increase. Let's keep that in perspective, though. Youth turnout is not likely to climb into the 60 or 70% range. The highest youth turnout ever was 55%, recorded in 1972. I would be extremely happy to see us match that number this year. Who knows, maybe we'll be surprised and it will be higher, but we shouldn't go into Tuesday expecting that it will be higher.

Even if youth turnout rises significantly, there is no guarantee that the youth share of the electorate will show a comparable increase.

This was the big problem in 2004: youth turnout rose significantly, but, because older portions of the electorate also increased their turnout rate, the youth share of the electorate held steady at 17%. It is highly possible that increased turnout among African Americans and other groups, or even decreased participation among depressed (young) McCain supporters, could prevent young voters from increasing their share of the electorate on Tuesday.

Again, this isn't to say that youth won't increase their share of the electorate, but don't be surprised if it holds steady at 17%. More importantly, don't use that "share of the electorate" figure as an accurate measure of youth participation. More on that below.

Don't Compare Apples to Oranges:

There are two measures of youth turnout from 2004 - those taken from national exit polling, and a more accurate measure taken from the Current Population Survey. While the CPS data is more accurate (and it is what you will find on most fact sheets from CIRCLE), it also does not come out until months after the election and uses a different methodology than exit polling. To ensure that we are not comparing apples to oranges on Election Night, it is best that, when measuring youth turnout, we compare the 2008 exit polls to the 2004 exit polls. Here are the exit poll numbers from 2004. Use these as your baseline when reporting on Tuesday's youth turnout:

18 - 29 year olds:

• Vote Count = 19.4 million
• Turnout = 48%
• Share = 17%

Common Mistakes (and Basic Facts) About the Youth Vote:

Some of these might be repetitive from above, but they bare repeating. Use these as a guide when reporting on young voter turnout on Tuesday night:

1. When reporting on youth participation, do not confuse "share of the electorate" with "turnout." Share of the electorate is a measure of the proportion of young voters who cast a ballot in relation to all other voters. Turnout is the percentage of all eligible young voters who cast a ballot. Share measures the influence of young voters within the electorate as a whole. Turnout tells us whether or not more young people showed up at the polls. Please do not confuse them.
2. It is possible for turnout to rise, while share of the electorate remains steady. Indeed, this is exactly what happened in 2004. Young voter turnout (18 - 29) increased by 9 percentage points from 40 to 49% (an increase of about 4.3 million votes). However, young voter's share of the electorate remained steady at 17%.
3. Young voters can only be held accountable for their own actions, not those of the entire electorate. If the youth vote's share of the electorate holds steady from 2004 to 2008, that will mean that older voters also went to the polls in higher numbers. Young voters cannot be held accountable for that. As such, turnout and the hard number of votes are the only accurate measure to gauge the success of efforts to get out young voters.
4. Rising youth turnout is a trend, not a fad tied to the popularity of Senator Obama. Contrary to conventional wisdom, or media reports from 2004, Obama's campaign is not solely responsible for higher youth turnout, though it has played a crucial role during this election cycle. Youth turnout began to rise in 2004, when youth it jumped by 9 percentage points, from 40 to 49%, and 4.3 million more young voters cast a ballot than in 2000. This trend continued in 2006, which saw the first increase in young voter turnout during a midterm election since the 1980s. It reached a new height in early 2008 when youth turnout in the primaries was double that from 2000, the last comparable year. In some states, youth turnout in the primaries was triple or quadruple that of previous years.
5. The margin of victory among young voters may be just as important as the overall increase in youth turnout. In 2004, 20 million young voters cast a ballot, with 54% selecting John Kerry. That gave Kerry an advantage of 1.6 million votes over President Bush among young voters. This year, if 22 million young voters cast ballots and 62% choosing Obama vs. 38% for McCain (numbers roughly found in most polling), that would give Senator Obama an advantage of 5.28 million votes.
6. Youth turnout is about access, not apathy. When young people are registered to vote - they turn out. According to the US Census, 81.6% of all registered young voters actually cast a ballot in 2004. That is on par with other portions of electorate. The more campaigns and independent organizations work to register young voters, and the easier we make the registration process, the higher youth turnout will be.
7. Regardless of youth turnout on Tuesday, young voters have already played a crucial and decisive role in this contest. In the Iowa Democratic caucuses, young voter turnout tripled and their share of caucus-goers was equal to that of the "reliable" 65+ demographic. Obama won the support of 60% of Iowa's youth, catapulting him to the front of the Democratic pack. Similar levels of support from youth in the following primaries and caucuses were the foundation of Obama's primary success.

In all likelihood, we are standing on the brink of an historic election, and we may well witness youth turnout unlike any we've seen in decades. Let's make sure that, whatever the final numbers, we have an accurate reporting of that turnout and don't make the same mistakes that so many reporters and bloggers made after our disappointing loss in 2004.

In thinking over my last post about Gallup's estimates, I had a horrific thought. What if youth turnout skyrockets but, because turnout is again up among all demographics, the youth share of the electorate decreases?

That would be a communications nightmare. Let's pray it doesn't happen.

In addition to their excellent fact sheet on voter registration and election laws earlier today, CIRCLE also released a fact sheet providing the definitive data on youth turnout in 2000 and 2004, and youth demographic data for 2008. The page also links to an interactive flash map that breaks the youth vote turnout data down on a state by state basis.

Every reporter, blogger, and youth advocate should have this page bookmarked.

And here are the demographic breakdowns of the youth vote for 2000, 2004, and 2008:

Last week we hit back at ABC and John Stossel pretty hard over their willful misrepresentations of the youth vote as "too dumb to vote." Today, over at the Rock the Vote blog, Kat Barr has an excellent piece posted about another youth vote meme that is taking hold in the media: young people register in droves, but then fail to vote.

Like so many other media narratives about the youth vote, this just isn't true. Here's what Kat has to say:

Now, when I read that, I got suspicious. I know that in 2004, 81.6% of registered 18-29 year olds voted, a turnout rate not low by any definition.

Of course, not all of those were new voters, so I decided to check it out a bit further.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2004:

* 83.3% of registered 18-year-olds voted;
* 79% of registered 19-year-olds voted;
* 81% of registered 20-year-olds voted;
* 82.3% of registered 21-year-olds voted.

Nearly all of these voters were "new" by virtue of age, and all were new to a presidential election.

What's the lesson? Whether young or new, or young and new, if a person is registered to vote, they are very likely to cast a ballot.

So to all the skeptics I want to say - knock it off! You're telling the easy story, the "will those darn kids really vote?" - but not the factual story. Don't believe me, believe the facts: you can be sure that those darn kids will indeed overwhelm the polls come November 4th.

You read that right - over 80% of registered youth voted on election day in 2004. Here's what that looks like in graph form, across the entire electorate (click for a larger image. Courtesy of Chris Kennedy, also of Rock the Vote.):

Kat's last point can't be stressed enough. Most journalists are telling the easy story, not the factual story. The vast majority of young voters who are registered to vote show up and cast a ballot on election day. As I wrote in The Nation back in August, lower than average turnout at the polls among young voters is about access, not apathy:

Young voters face more barriers to participating in the political process than any other demographic in the electorate except perhaps ex-felons. Some of these factors are structural and can be attributed to lifestyle issues. Others are deliberate attempts to keep young voters from the polls. Here's a look at how our voting system disenfranchises our youngest citizens:

[...]

Contrast all this to the situation of an older voter. Older voters have had many more opportunities to register. They are generally stationary, having put down roots in a community and thus do not need to change their registration. They have conveniently located polling places with short wait times. Their residency or eligibility is rarely challenged, and campaigns spend tens to hundreds of millions of dollars each cycle to reach out and encourage older voters to go to the polls. Is it any wonder that youth turnout lags behind?

Look at this problem from a marketing perspective. If you were Nike and you were selling a sneaker, you would do whatever it took to get your product in front of your target audience, get them into the store, and buy your product. You wouldn't ignore your target market and then whine about the fact that no one was buying your shoes. The same is true for young people and voting. If we want them to get to the polls, we have to put our resources behind efforts to register them, and we have to make our product (voting/democracy) readily and easily available to them.

Once registered, young voters show up in numbers comparable to the rest of the electorate. That's why all of these new voters that Obama is bringing into the system matter so much - because it is highly likely that 80% or more of those newly registered voters will turnout on November 4th.

This is why the work of all the groups Kat highlights was important in 2004, and it's why the work of groups like Rock the Vote, HeadCount, the Bus Federation, YDA, and The League are so vital in this election cycle, and will continue to be so in the future. They increase access for young people in what can often be an intimidating and occasionally opaque system. It's also why, coming off a winning electoral season, I'd like to see a lot of energy thrown behind Election Day Registration initiatives in more states to increase the ease with which young people can register and participate in the political process.