By Michael Xenos
As soon as the last pieces of confetti hit the floor, or at least as soon as they were swept up, people began parsing the meaning of this historic election and exploring questions about what happened that go beyond the basic outcome. As a follow-up to my earlier post, in this post I specifically take a look at what we now know about youth participation in 2008. As we’ll see in a moment, the data paint a picture that reminds us of 2004 in some ways, but also offers a new wrinkle or two. Overall, I think there is much to be excited about with respect to youth voting in 2008, especially if the momentum is cultivated properly.
Let’s start with the glass half-empty interpretation: as in 2004, increases in youth turnout were accompanied by increases in the rates of voting among members of other age groups. So ultimately, if we look at youth turnout as the share of all of the ballots cast that came from people under 30, the pollsters estimate that number to be 18%, just one percentage point higher than in 2004.
However, I think there are plenty of reasons to be particularly excited about youth turnout in 2008. For one thing, the sheer numbers are exciting. As the folks at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) point out, there were 3.4 million more 18-29 year old voters this year as compared to the last presidential election, making the overall total number of young voters an inspiring 23 million.
The picture also looks much better if we consider other ways of describing youth turnout. Many researchers looking at youth turnout consider Bill Clinton’s first presidential victory in 1992 as a point of reference. In that election, youth turnout (as a proportion of young people, rather than total ballots) hit 52%. As the CIRCLE report indicates, the precise numbers are still being tabulated, but at this point this year’s turnout is looking like it will very closely match, or even surpass that number. If it does, 2008 will replace 1992 as the year with the highest youth turnout since 1972, when 18-year olds first received the right to vote.
Although the prospect of having 2008 replace or join 1992 as a milestone for youth participation is exciting, for the most part, these arguments follow the 2004 post-mortem discussions fairly closely. One significant difference over last time though, is the strong support for Obama along age lines. As Andrew Gelman points out, this year marks a steep increase in the age-gap in partisan support. As the third graph in his post on the election shows, as compared with 2004 or 2000, the difference in support for the Republican candidate between 25 year olds and 35 year olds this time around is striking. You may recall that in 2004, people talking about whether the youth vote turned out often cited the fact that Kerry lost as evidence that the youth vote didn’t make a difference. In an oft quoted one-liner, the late Hunter S. Thompson put it colorfully in his response to youth voting in 2004: "Yeah, we rocked the vote all right…Those little bastards betrayed us again." Suffice it to say it’s a shame that Thompson is not around to be surprised that things turned out differently this time.
So, what caused young people to play an important role in this election? Was it Rock the Vote, or other similar efforts? Alternatively, was it Obama’s explicit appeals to young people throughout the campaign and aggressive attempts to reach them through popular outlets such as text messaging and social network websites? (To be fair, John McCain also has a Facebook page, although it seems to be less popular than the President-elect’s.) Or was it issues like the economy, which is particularly salient for people just getting ready to start their careers and economic lives? Unfortunately, it will take time to sort out questions such as these with data, although young people I’ve talked to certainly have their suspicions.
To conclude, I think Peter Levine of CIRCLE makes one of the best points about these patterns, which is that the important thing is to keep the ball rolling with more efforts to engage new young people in the political process and also to keep those who just joined the process interested and involved.
Comments