How the youth vote was miscalculated

pixmo

Bucktoothed feline member
Fair use policy applies
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/198167_youth04.html


MIAMI -- Rock stars and media celebrities courted them, as did a small army of voter registration activists and the campaigns of both the major presidential candidates.

In the end, huge numbers of young people voted Tuesday, although the record overall turnout meant that young voters' percentage of the total number of ballots cast stayed the same as in the 2000 contest -- about 18 percent.

But activists were buoyed that the turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds jumped by 9.3 percent over the level in 2000.

"We're seeing extraordinarily high turnout," said Holly Teresi, spokeswoman for the YouthVote Coalition, a non-partisan collection of groups that worked to encourage youth political participation. "In the battleground states, young people were voting at the same rate as 60-year-olds. That's huge."

Figures tabulated yesterday by The Associated Press showed that a total of 114.9 million Americans had voted with 99 percent of precincts reporting. However, Curtis Gans, director of the non-partisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, put the total turnout at nearly 120 million people. That represents just under 60 percent of eligible voters -- the highest percentage turnout since 1968, Gans said.

Pundits and political strategists had targeted the youth vote as a potential game breaker in the presidential contest, especially after the country saw a flood of new voter registration. The conventional wisdom was that many of those new voters were young and that they might be more likely to back Kerry.

Although Kerry did take 54 percent of the youth vote, compared with 44 percent for President Bush on Tuesday and 48 percent for Al Gore in 2000, activists say the mainstream media missed the mark in its predictions about young voters.

"It wasn't a good assumption that youth would vote as a monolith for Kerry," said Adam Alexander, a spokesman for the New Voter Project, another non-partisan group that helped register 350,000 young people in six states. "I think the lesson is that you can't take the youth vote for granted."

Preliminary estimates compiled by the University of Maryland's Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement showed about 20.9 million youths voted, an increase of 4.6 million from the 2000 election. The number will rise, too, as provisional and absentee ballots are tallied.

The percentage of eligible young people who voted was estimated at 51.6 percent, up from 42.3 percent in 2000.

Analysts offered a variety of reasons for the intense interest by young voters, starting with the fact that people of all ages were fixated on a contest that presented stark choices over contentious issues such as the economy, the war in Iraq and the threat of terrorism.

Still, as any advertising executive would attest, young people are distinct from their elders in many ways. Political campaigns may only now be learning that they must hone their message carefully in order to win the youth vote -- something former President Clinton proved with his groundbreaking appearance on MTV during the 1992 campaign.

"You can get young people to vote, but they want to be invited to the party," said Mary Dixson, assistant director of the Anette Strauss Institute at the University of Texas. "They're courted by the media, by Verizon and Levi's and everything else, and their attention doesn't get drawn unless there is a focused effort."

Many experts thought the war in Iraq, along with rumors that have swirled on some college campuses that a military draft might be reinstated, would have meant Kerry would have carried the youth vote by a much larger margin.

Activists, however, weren't surprised by the results.

"Everybody thought they'd all be for Kerry, but our polling showed young people were really split between Kerry and Bush," Teresi said. "Young people cared about the economy, terrorism and Iraq, education and health care."

Indeed, the Bush campaign clearly didn't write off the youth vote, perhaps mindful that many young people, especially from religious and conservative families, might be counted on to vote as their parents do.
 

pixmo

Bucktoothed feline member
Youth vote disappoints
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http://www.theshorthorn.com/archive/2004/fall/04-nov-04/n110404-04.html


Despite massive mobilization efforts, 2004 was not the breakout year for the youth vote, exit polls indicate.

While the actual number of voters in the 18- to 24-year-old demographic may have gone up, their proportion of the electorate was the same as in 2000, according to The Associated Press.

Several groups, both political parties and even celebrities tried to mobilize the youth vote. Rock the Vote conducted a large-scale campaign by holding voter registration rallies at universities and inviting groups on both sides to participate. One of these rallies was at UTA, where Democratic groups were in the majority. The $7,500 event provided students with entertainment from rock and hip-hop bands as well as the opportunity to register to vote.

Several evangelical Christian groups attempted to mobilize conservative youth voters while rapper Sean “P. Diddy” Combs targeted youth with his “Vote or Die” campaign.

MoveOn.org, a liberal group, got into the effort as well, but the result wasn’t what it had hoped for, said Victoria Farrar-Myers, political science associate professor.

“This election was about mobilizing base and mobilizing immobilized voters,” she said. “In some ways, it’s a bit disappointing.”

Had more youth voted, it is possible that the result may have been different. The 18- to 24-year-olds who did vote favored Kerry, according to the exit polls, because of the war in Iraq and the economy. Farrar-Myers said exit polls may be misleading and should have waited until at least a few precincts were counted before making a call.

Rebecca Deen, political science associate professor, said she wasn’t surprised by the youth vote turnout, but the mobilization efforts underscored what made the election unique.

“This election was an opportunity for groups that had not been represented in the political process to turn out, and the youth vote was one of those groups,” she said.

Advertising junior Mariam Hussain was among the students who opted to shy from the polls on Election Day. She said she could find little reason to back either Kerry or Bush, feeling that Bush’s main agenda was to finish work from his father’s time in office and that Kerry had not fully revealed his intentions. Hussain did not vote in the 2000 election either.

She said she felt voting had been split in terms of class rather than age.

“I’ve been told that the upper class is voting for Bush, and the lower class is voting for Kerry,” Hussain said.

Biology junior Sarah Menza took advantage of early voting and cast her ballot for Bush well in advance of Tuesday’s deadline. Menza said most people in the 18-24 age group feel their votes do not count, and the younger generation is not particularly interested in politics.

“A lot of people within that age range don’t own houses and in some cases, even cars,” she said. “They don’t have a lot of material things that they don’t want to have taxes on.”
 

potemkin

Inactive
Not only that but that have been some good reports that the newly registered voters also "disappointed."

I was always assumed by the Democrats that most newly registered or first time voters would go their way.

It appears that wasn't the case. Exit polling, (FWIWW) show they new voters voted similar to the rest of the population, about 50/50.

So, since the Democrats spent the most registering and getting the voter out the Republicans give a nice "Thank You!".
 

Satanta

Stone Cold Crazy
_______________
You know what they say about assuming thing?

It makes an Ass out of U, And ME? I'm getting a Beer. :D
 

Gizmo

Veteran Member
My experience with "youth", at least in the cities, is that they wouldn't get up early to vote and were too stoned or drunk or don't think they should have to wait in line to do it in the evening. They are usually the "gimmee" or "why me" ilk.
Not all of course. Probably half of them were stalking people at the polls to vote for Kerry (MoveOn.org) and never bothered to vote themselves because they thought they had it all sewed up. Haaa!
 
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