youth turnout

CIRCLE has recalculated its estimation of youth turnout following reweighted exit poll data from Edison Research.

The original post-election estimation of youth turnout was 20-21% of registered 18-29 voters for a vote share of 11% of the electorate. The new reweighted estimation is 22.8% of young voters with a 12% vote share. Youth turnout in 2010 is in the same range as turnout from the 2006 midterm elections.

Ballot boxes all over the country felt pretty lonely on Tuesday.
Sure, they had election workers tending to them and making sure ballots were fully stocked. And, of course, older voters predictably made their way to the polls. But young people were largely missing on Tuesday.

In Iowa City and in several key elections all across the country, the youth turnout was abysmal.

One year ago, youth — those aged 18-29 — fueled the election of the nation’s first black president.

Beginning with the Iowa caucuses, young people not only voted in greater numbers, they volunteered, took off school to work on the campaign, and donated money.

Before 2008, how many candidates created Facebook pages or sent out important political information via text message? Now every candidate running for political office — whether for governor or dogcatcher — has a Facebook page, a website, and would love to get your cell-phone number. In 2008, youth were an absolutely critical component, a major piece to the puzzle in the election of Barack Obama.
Young people transformed politics.

One year later, we have to ask ourselves, “What happened?” It’s not only Iowa City student precincts that performed poorly. Youth turnout barely registered in New Jersey and student-saturated Virginia. There are some locally and nationally who will look at Tuesday’s results and argue that students are simply apathetic. To them, 2008 was an aberration — no Obama to vote for, no youth turnout.

It’s easy to make such an argument, but it’s too simplistic and not entirely correct. Yes, too many students are apathetic. Many are uninterested and disengaged from politics. Youth turnout since 2004 has been increasing and in 2009 there were several young candidates elected to local office.

The truth is that in many instances young people are engaged. Yet, it’s also true that youth are too often are completely absent when they don’t feel a direct connection to an issue. And it’s true that in elections that don’t spike a high level of interest and excitement, young people sometimes don’t bother to vote.

While Iowa City’s City Council elections are nonpartisan, a lack of youth turnout contributed to Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Democrats are increasingly reliant on young voters and youth turnout. Not only did Obama win the youth vote by a nearly 3 to 1 margin, youth made up a greater share of the overall electorate in 2008. When young people don’t vote, it’s more difficult for Democrats to win.

According to available exit poll data, 18-29 year olds were only 10 percent of all voters in Virginia’s gubernatorial race. In 2008, youth made up 21 percent of the electorate. In 2008, Obama received 60 percent of the youth vote in Virginia and became the first Democrat to carry Virginia since 1964. In 2009, the Democratic candidate, Creigh Deeds, received 44 percent of the youth vote. Deeds actually lost voters under 30 to the Republican candidate, Bob McDonnell.

While Deeds was far from perfect, his campaign never made young voters a priority. The result: anemic youth turnout in Virginia and a defeat. You don’t have to act like Obama, talk like him, or even look like him to inspire young voters. You do, however, have to talk to youth, ask youth for their votes, and give them a reason to vote for you.

There’s no excuse for the lack of student turnout in Tuesday’s City Council election. With two students on the ballot, student turnout should have been greater.

But let’s be careful not to give up on young voters in 2010.
For Democratic candidates, youth turnout will be critical to their success. And candidates running in 2010 who want youth to turn out have to go out and make a compelling case for them to do so.

This article originally appeared in The Daily Iowan on November 5th. The Daily Iowan is the student newspaper at the University of Iowa. The author Simeon Talley is a columnist for the paper.

This month CIRCLE released a report on the effects of state voter registration laws on young voter turnout.

The report shows that Election Day Registration (EDR) had the greatest effect in the November 2008 election in increasing youth turnout.

Election Day registration laws (EDR) allow voters to avoid the inconvenience and pressure of registration deadlines. As of 2008, nine states (Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) allow voters to register at the polls on Election Day. In a 2003 study about the 2000 Presidential Election, it was found that turnout was, on average, 14 percentage points higher among 18- to 24-year-old youth in states that had EDR. EDR may also decrease the disparity between younger and older voters. Before implementing EDR, Idaho, New Hampshire, and Wyoming were among the worst states in terms of turnout inequality between younger and older Americans. After EDR laws took effect, all three states decreased this gap dramatically. Wyoming, for example, moved from 39th place to the 7th smallest turnout gap.

What is so impressive is how dramatic the effect of EDR was in increasing turnout (emphasis added):

After controlling for effects of educational attainment, gender, marital status, age, race, and ethnicity, young people whose home state implemented EDR were 41% more likely to vote in the November 2008 election than those who did not have residence in the EDR states.

The report also shows that no-excuse absentee voting/vote by mail most likely had a strong effect, 23% of young voters voted absentee, however CIRCLE was "not able to estimate how the use of this strategy impacts state-by-state turnout since many young people, such as college students, live outside of their home state." In-person absentee voting was appeared to be a convenience to young voters who were already planning to vote, but CIRCLE does not believe that its availability turned young voters out that were not already determined to vote.

Extended polling hours resulted in an increase in the turnout of young workers and part-time students, but did not seem to have much of an effect on full-time students.

The general theme of the report is one that we often discuss in the youth political community: that lowering the barriers to voting will increase turnout. Youth organizations should be working with state legislators to reform their elections processes and enact some or all of the policies mentioned in the report, as well as others, such as online registration and permanent vote-by-mail.

Update: Just noticed a mistake in the 2004 map. Illinois should be Blue. I'll swap out a new one as soon as I can. Fixed.
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CIRCLE has updated their youth turnout numbers. You'll remember that these estimates are based on exit polls and the overall vote count. As absentee and early voting ballots get counted, the totals rise, changing the turnout numbers. CIRCLE now estimates that:

• 23 million young voters cast a ballot on Tuesday, an increase of 3.4 million over 2004.
• Youth turnout will likely top off at 52 - 53%. That would rival the 1992 turnout, and fall just short of the all time record of 55.4% set in 1972.
• Young voters accounted for 60% of the overall turnout increase. That for the whole electorate.
• CIRCLE still estimates that young voters made up 18% of the total electorate.

The big story still remains Obama's staggering 66 - 32% margin among youth, and I want to explore that a little more in pictures, so Future Majority commissioned a designer to put together some smart info-graphics. Here's an historical look at the youth vote margin, long-term and short-term:

We've made huge gains among youth in recent years, but it's amazing seeing the 24 year swing of young voters away from the Republicans after Reagan's all-time high in 1984.

CIRCLE had one final observation about the 2008 youth vote - as in 2004, turnout was higher in states that were highly targeted by the campaigns (and I would add independent organizations):

CIRCLE estimated comparative turnout in states that were heavily campaigned by both candidates (CO, FL, IA, IN, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, NC, OH, PA, VA and WI), and all other states for youth and all ages combined. According to CIRCLE’s estimation using aggregated counts of votes from each of these states, youth turnout in the heavily campaigned states was especially strong at 59%, compared with 47% for all other states combined. Using the same method, overall turnout in these heavily campaigned states was also high at 69%, compared with 56% for all other states combined. Based on these statistics, it can be inferred that young voters responded to various campaigning efforts in these states by casting their ballots at much higher rates than young people in other states.

The numbers will continue to move a little as all the votes come in, but the big question mark that remains about youth impact on the election is down ballot. Did Obama have coattails, and did his 66 - 32% margin translate into votes for other candidates? Or was there significant drop off? That's going to take some time to figure out, but it's an important question - with implications for how campaigns, the party and independent youth orgs conduct their work. I'll post when we know more.

Over at WireTap, FM friend Karlo Marcelo has an excellent article posted handicapping the youth vote in the battleground states, and pointing out where youth turnout might have the biggest impact on Tuesday. Karlo does the number crunching on all this stuff for CIRCLE, so I tend to trust his analysis. Here's a quick look at the data:

In his piece, Karlo singles out Florida, Ohio and New Mexico as states where youth might make the biggest difference due to a combination of factors: high youth share of the electorate, large college populations, and/or massive Democratic advantage in the youth electorate in previous elections. I don't want to completely steal Karlo's post, so for a better understanding, go read his full analysis.

Michael recently called out the New York Times on their dismal profile of Declare Yourself for subliminally playing into the popular fallacies about the youth vote and youth turnout. Unfortunately, this is just one example in a long-standing problem with media coverage of young voters.

As it turns out, these repeated fallacies about young people being apathetic, not turning out, et al may be more damaging than we previously thought. To uncover the hidden damage done by the media's false narrative we must look into the field of social psychology.

In Dr. Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, there is a chapter on commitment and consistency. Here is a passage that may help shed some light on the potential negative effects of this narrative:

What those around us think is true of us is enormously important in determining what we ourselves think is true. For example, one study found that after hearing that they were considered charitable people, New Haven, Connecticut, housewives gave much more money to a canvasser from the Multiple Sclerosis Association. Apparently the mere knowledge that someone viewed them as charitable caused these women to make their actions consistent with another's perception of them.

Potential young voters are constantly hearing that they do not vote, will not vote, and that they don't care. The danger lying herein is that some young voters that are not directly engaged may act, or not act as it is, because of unconscious consistency.

This may seem like a bunch of crap psycho-babble, but think about it for a moment. How often have we seen organizations talk about how to make voting "cool?" There have been efforts to combat a negative stigma towards political engagement and voting. We have a situation where the media says that young people don't vote, a young person may think: "I'm young. Nobody expects me to vote anyway. Other young people aren't voting. Why bother?"

This is a big reason why it is important to push back on these fallacious media narratives about young voters.

On the bright side, good media coverage and stories about young people getting involved have that positive effect on young voters. Good coverage also provides social proof that other young people are being engaged and voting.

This is also another reason why vote pledges are so important. As I wrote in an earlier post a while back, vote pledges involve an even more powerful use of the principles of commitment and consistency. The individual pledge to vote, a personal act of commitment, overwhelms the effect of demographic consistency.

What do you think? Does the false media narrative potentially lead to this danger, or am I just spouting psychobabble? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Its the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

"Voter excitement, always up before a presidential election, is pushing registration through the roof so far this year - with more than 3.5 million people rushing to join in the historic balloting, according to an Associated Press survey that offers the first national snapshot.

Figures are up for blacks, women and young people. Rural and city. South and North.

Overall, the AP found that nearly one in 65 adult Americans signed up to vote in just the first three months of the year. And in the 21 states that were able to provide comparable data, new registrations have soared about 64 percent from the same three months in the 2004 campaign."

That is only in 21 states we're comparing... can you imagine what its like for all 50 states?

Our good buddies at the DNC sent out a memo detailing the information as well as quoting pertinent stats

• "Turnout for voters 18-29 has increased dramatically-tripling or quadrupling in many states-this election season. So far, more than 5 million young voters have participated, with an overwhelming number going for Democrats-building on gains made among this key demographic in 2004 and 2006. [civicyouth.org]
• This trend can be seen in state after state. In Massachusetts, for instance, youth turnout doubled, with young people voting for Democrats over Republicans nearly 3- to-1. 168,863 young people voted for Democrats while only 62,159 voted for Republicans, nearly tripling the numbers from 2004 [55,367] and 2000 [45,722]. [civicyouth.org]
• Recent polls confirm these results. According to a Pew study released last month, 58 percent of voters under 30 now identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, while only 33 percent associate with Republicans. The gap is even greater for young female voters-63 percent to 28 percent. [Pew Study, released 4/28/08]"

And we still have several more months left to register more. This is a great motivator for all those orgs out there - and its a great fundraising tool for those working on young voter registration, GOTV, and doing youth specific organizing.

In the past the youth movement has had a lot of drop off to get funders to invest in the youth movement - ideally this will rejuvenate those past donors and encourage bringing about new ones.

Happy fundraising!