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youth vote
Nov. 10th, 2004 01:01 pmI've been furious over the last week with one piece of spin, repeated by, among others, Chris Matthews incessantly the day after the election. "We were expecting a big youth turnout," it says, "but it didn't happen." Sometimes this is accompanied by a statistic that purports to show that the youth vote didn't increase at all from 2000 to 2004.
This is, of course, completely bogus. The number that's been bandied about is "Of the people who voted, how many were under 30?" The answer is about 18% in both 2000 and 2004. But what this obscures is that lots more young people went out to vote this year. The reason the 18% hasn't changed is, lots more of everyone went out to vote this year.
It took me a while to get around to finding them, but here are the numbers I wanted: 4.6 million more under-30 voters than in 2000. Highest youth turnout since 1972. Percentage of young people who voted: Up from 42% to 51%. Over 64% in battleground states... and that's just the people who voted in person. (These numbers are from exit polls, which don't count absentees. Lots of college students vote absentee, for their home precinct.)
I talked to lots of first-time voters before the election, most of them well under 30. They were excited about it. I'm afraid some of them felt, when the results came in, like what they did didn't matter. And this "young people didn't show up" meme--sometimes expressed as "these shallow kids went to the rock the vote concerts but would rather rock than vote," or actually blaming Kerry's loss on the minority of young people who didn't vote, instead of on the majority of older people who voted for Bush--just makes things worse.
Also, here's what the electoral map would look like if we old people weren't allowed to vote. (Hint: Better.)
This is, of course, completely bogus. The number that's been bandied about is "Of the people who voted, how many were under 30?" The answer is about 18% in both 2000 and 2004. But what this obscures is that lots more young people went out to vote this year. The reason the 18% hasn't changed is, lots more of everyone went out to vote this year.
It took me a while to get around to finding them, but here are the numbers I wanted: 4.6 million more under-30 voters than in 2000. Highest youth turnout since 1972. Percentage of young people who voted: Up from 42% to 51%. Over 64% in battleground states... and that's just the people who voted in person. (These numbers are from exit polls, which don't count absentees. Lots of college students vote absentee, for their home precinct.)
I talked to lots of first-time voters before the election, most of them well under 30. They were excited about it. I'm afraid some of them felt, when the results came in, like what they did didn't matter. And this "young people didn't show up" meme--sometimes expressed as "these shallow kids went to the rock the vote concerts but would rather rock than vote," or actually blaming Kerry's loss on the minority of young people who didn't vote, instead of on the majority of older people who voted for Bush--just makes things worse.
Also, here's what the electoral map would look like if we old people weren't allowed to vote. (Hint: Better.)
