Many commentators from Neil Howe to Steven Johnson have praised the Millennials as the most civic-minded youth cohort since the 1960s. One of their favorite data points has been the rise in youth voting since the 1990s. The 2004 election saw a big jump in the youth vote of around nine percentage points, and in 2008 it rose another two to three points.
Still, just barely half of them (51 percent) did bother to show up in November 08, leading some youth-vote skeptics to question decalrations such as Time Magazine’s designation of 2008 as “The Year of the Youth Vote.” The last three major state elections — New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts — have corroborated the skepticism. Here is a report by CIRCLE on youth voting rates, with this summary:
“About 15 percent of Massachusetts citizens between the ages of 18 and 29 turned out to vote.* For citizens age 30 and older, turnout was about 57 percent.
“For comparison: 25 percent of young citizens (age 18 to 29) voted in the 2008 Massachusetts presidential primaries, and 47.8 percent of young Massachusetts citizens voted in the 2008 presidential elections, according to CIRCLE’s analysis. Seventy-eight percent of under-30 voters in Massachusetts chose Barack Obama in the 2008 general election; 20 percent chose John McCain.
“While national youth turnout was very strong in 2008 (when 52 percent of young American citizens voted), youth turnout in the 2009 Virginia and New Jersey Gubernatorial races was poor (17 percent and 19 percent, respectively), and even lower in Massachusetts this Tuesday. ‘Three state elections do not necessarily make a national trend, but there is clearly an issue right now with youth turnout and enthusiasm,’ said CIRCLE director Peter Levine. ‘It will be interesting to see the turnout of young voters in November’s mid-term elections.’”
Turnout always drops in off-years and in special elections, of course, but the drop here is remarkable. And in Massachusetts, given the publicity surrounding the campaign in the final days, it couldn’t be blamed on young voters not being aware of the election.
Clearly, the Obama-fan factor didn’t hold, even though Obama himself played a part in the campaign. Here we see the hazards of voting-by-inspiration. Levine notes a problem with youth “enthusiasm,” but young people need to be told that the point of the democratic process isn’t to get them excited. They should vote no matter how boring the whole scene looks, and they should do so because it’s the right thing to do. And what makes it seem right to them is their memory of disfranchisement in the Jim Crow Era, the 19th Amendment, Florida 2000, etc.
2 Responses to The Millennials in Massachusetts
jffoster - January 25, 2010 at 7:07 am
Do you suppose more people would vote if ‘None of the above’ were one of the options? I once knew a fellow. we’ll call him Boudreau, who had done very well in high school, and also as an undergraduate. But he was having real trouble as a 1-L and eventually left Law School. I asked another friend, who knew him better (and who would on to become editor of the Law Review in his 3-L year) what Boudreau’s main problem was?. Quoth the future Law Review editor: “He believed the Civics book.”
cleverclogs - January 27, 2010 at 7:39 am
I don’t know how much we can tell from the Massachusetts vote. I’m in MA; both the weather that day and the timing for students were bad. Also, as jffoster suggests, the options on the ballot were pretty poor for Kennedy’s seat.But in a more general sense, I have noted that the kids I’ve been teaching for the last few years are driven almost exclusively by fashion. I think they vote when it’s “hot” – by which I mean readily comprehended because it’s been digested for them by the entertainment industry. At least that’s the way it seems to me. Strange people.