For nearly four decades, young voters - age 18-29 - have turned out for midterm elections at about half the rate of older Americans. Based on early calculations, this year was no different, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, the Tufts University project that tracks and analyzes the youth vote. CIRCLE's estimates, said Director Peter Levine in a press call earlier today, put this year's youth voter turnout at about 20.4 percent, 2.4 percent percent lower than in the last midterm in 2006. That year, some 10 million young people voted. This year, about 9 million did. The center has found that its numbers run slightly lower than those released by the Census several months after each election, but they follow the same trend, as shown in the chart below. Estimates of turnout for voters 30 or older aren't yet available, but if the past is any guide, around 52-55 percent of that age group voted.
A survey by RocktheVote.org before the election found 77 percent of young voters saying they definitely would cast ballots this year. Too bad that wasn't the case. If it were, Russ Feingold would have another six-year term ahead of him. Levine said that voters 18 to 29 were the only age cohort in which the majority voted for the Democratic candidates over Republican candidates nationwide. Overall, 56 percent of young voters cast ballots for Democrats this year while only 40 percent voted for Republicans. That contrasts with 60 percent vs. 33 percent in 2008. Voters in the 18-24 cohort were even more favorable to Democratic candidates than voters under 30. "The Dems could have seen a very different outcome [this year] if they had targeted young voters," Levine said.
Of President Obama's campaign push on campuses and other venues in the weeks leading up to Tuesday, Biko Baker of the League of Young Voters said that it's "not about the President, it's the infrastructure of the Democratic Party." Given high unemployment, costs of higher education and other concerns of youth, spurring them to vote can't just be done in a four-week campaign before each election, Baker said. And paying attention to the needs of young voters must be done by the candidates themselves.
As I pointed out three weeks ago in Millennials: Will they, or won't they?, Democrats are foolish not to take advantage of the fact that youth generally have more liberal views on most subjects:
Not since the "Greatest Generation," comprising young adults during World War II, has any generation been so solidly identified with Democrats and liberal attitudes. Young voters are more diverse racially and ethnically than older voters, more secular in their religious views, more open to immigrants, more open to non-traditional family arrangements, more likely to do volunteer work, and less supportive of interventionist foreign policy. If Millennials were the only Americans casting ballots this year, it would be a clean sweep for Democrats.
But the advantage for Democrats of these views and behavior can't accrue as long as less than half as many young voters as older ones turn out for midterms. Changing that long-standing dynamic has a simple formula: Pay real attention to the needs of young adults. And, crucially, that attention should reach beyond college students. Youth who don't attend college and are more likely to come from lower-income households populated by people of color ought to get their needs attended to as well. If that happens their votes will follow.