Will Youth Vote Turnout Rate Top 1972?

The first year 18-year-olds could cast a ballot in a presidential election was 1972, and 52% of 18-to-24-year-olds showed up at the polls, compared with nearly 68% of voters 25 and older. It's been downhill ever since, with two spikes: one in 1992, when 48.6% of the youth vote showed up at the polls; and one in 2004, when 49% did.

        18-24       25&up       18-29       30&up
1972   52.1%       68.4%       55.4%      69.5%
1976   44.4%       65.4%       48.8%      67.0%
1980   43.4%       68.5%       48.2%      70.6%
1984   44.3%       68.9%       49.1%      71.2%
1988   39.9%       65.8%       43.8%      68.5%
1992   48.6%       70.5%       52.0%      72.4%
1996   35.6%       61.6%       39.6%      63.6%
2000   36.1%       62.9%       40.3%      64.6%
2004   46.7%       66.3%       49.0%      67.7%

It's starting to look as if young voters could break the 36-year-old turn-out record for their age cohort.

From the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement:

"Young Americans have been turning out to vote at remarkable rates in these primaries. This reflects their deep concern about the critical issues at stake and the impact of this election on our country’s future," said CIRCLE Director, Peter Levine. "Since 2000, young people have been volunteering at high rates and are becoming more interested in news and public affairs.

Now they are ready to consider voting as a way of addressing major problems. The Millennials are beginning to make their distinctive and lasting mark on American politics." The results from the Super Tuesday contests punctuate the findings of national focus groups that CIRCLE conducted last fall. The research showed that college students are deeply concerned about issues, involved personally as volunteers, and ready to consider voting. But they want political leaders to be positive, to address real problems, and to call on all Americans to be constructively involved.

Here are some of the results tallied by CIRCLE from Super Tuesday and a few other races. Only 17 states are included because others that day did not have exit polls for both Republican and Democratic contests or because they only held a Democratic or Republican contest. No tally was available for Minnesota.

Primaries and Caucuses
2008 Youth Turnout.....Youth 2000......2008 over 30 Turnout

Alabama              19%...........N/A..................36%    
Arkansas             11%...........N/A..................29%
Arizona                 7%...........N/A..................25%
California            17%...........13%..................32%
Connecticut         12%...........7%...................22%
Georgia               21%...........7%...................34%
Illinois                 18%...........N/A..................37%
Iowa                   13%...........N/A..................17%
Massachusetts    25%...........11%.................40%
Missouri              21%............7%..................35%
New Hampshire   43%...........N/A..................55%
New Jersey         18%...........N/A..................32%
New York            12%...........12%.................20%
Oklahoma           14%............4%..................33%
South Carolina    19%...........N/A..................31%
Tennessee          15%............4%..................30%
Utah                    15%...........N/A..................29%

But the skeptics aren’t done. With a bit of a sneer, Emory University English Professor Mark Brauerstein wrote in the February 6 Chronicle of Higher Education:

Every four years, we undergo a national citizenship ritual. Not the election, but the now-36-year-old question: Will the youth vote turn out? ...

In Salon last week, for instance, a story headlined "Young voters are stoked," and lots of stories such as this one appear in college towns. Just this morning The Chronicle ran a piece on student/voters down the road from me at Spelman College.

Why? Why do journalists and researchers pay so much attention to what turns out to be a small, relatively inconsequential (most of the time) group? In the Salon article, a political scientist is quoted at length, gushing that "young voters are paying attention. They’re online. They’re blogging. They’re talking about the election. They’re pumped." But later on in the article, author Katharine Mieszkowski writes, "A tripling of young voters’ participation [in the recent Florida primary] did not even bring them up to the same level of participation that the old fogies had back in 2000." The rate for under-30-year-olds went from 4 percent to 13 percent, while the rate for 30 and up went from 14 percent to 33 percent.

Two days later, however, Becky Supiano at the Chronicle noted:

It is conventional wisdom among political observers that candidates cannot count on young people to turn out in great numbers.

"Normally, young people tend to disappoint," said Kenneth F. Warren, a professor of political science at Saint Louis University who also runs a polling company, the Warren Poll.

So what's different this year?

"Campaigns are paying more attention to young voters," Ms. Kirby said. That increased attention builds on efforts made by both parties in the 2004 election, which marked the first campaign in which candidates hired people to attract young voters.

The issues being raised in this year's campaign also are particularly important to young voters, with the economy being among their top concerns, according to Ms. Kirby. This year, she added, young voters are leaning toward the Democrats—a change from 2004, she said, when young voters were evenly divided among Democrats, Republicans, and independents. ...

In so many ways, 2008 is already a watershed year being compared with other watershed years - like 1932, say hopeful Democrats. Young voters may turn it into a watershed for other reasons as well.