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 is not youth turnout, 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.
year
|
Democratic candidate’s share of the under-30 vote (exit polls) |
Democratic candidate’s share of the popular vote (Federal Election Commission) |
difference |
1976 |
51% |
50.0% |
+1.0% |
1980 |
44% |
41.0% |
+3.0% |
1984 |
40% |
40.4% |
-0.4%
|
1988 |
47% |
45.5% |
+1.5%
|
1992 |
43% |
42.9% |
+0.1%
|
1996 |
53% |
49.2% |
+3.8%
|
2000 |
48% |
48.3% |
-0.3%
|
2004 |
54% |
48.1% |
+5.9%
|
2008 |
66% |
projected to be 52% | +14% |
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.