[lbo-talk] The Youth DID Vote

[Jeffrey Fisher]

of course, this is (re)defining "the youth vote" as 18-29 rather than
18-24. do we really consider 29-year-olds "youths"? maybe we do, but
what i see in it is that increasing numbers of voting 25-29-year-olds
offset decreasing numbers of voting 18-24-year-olds (as i'm hearing
consistently that these numbers are down).

right?

iow, a lot of people who were in the 18-24-year-old group in 2000
voted in 2004, perhaps even more of them did than in 2000. maybe it
tells us something about their reaction to the 2000 election . . .

On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 05:54:16 -0500, snit snat
<snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> The Youth DID Vote
> by Matt Stoller
> 
> The conventional wisdom is flat-out wrong.  The youth voted.  And unlike
> 2000, where they were split evenly, the group went for Kerry.  In fact, it
> was the only age group that did.
> 
> At least 20.9 million Americans under the age of 30 voted in 2004, an
> increase of 4.6 million over 2000,1 and the turnout rate among these voters
> rose from about 42.3% to 51.6%, a sharp rise of 9.3 percentage points,
> according to final national exit polls and an early tally of votes cast.
> Youth voter turnout was especially high in the contested battleground
> states. "This is phenomenal," said CIRCLE Director William A. Galston. "It
> represents the highest youth turnout in more than a decade, 4 percentage
> points higher than the previous peak year of 1992."
> 
> Because young people participated in considerably larger numbers than they
> had in the past, they kept pace with the higher turnout of Americans of all
> ages. Voters under the age of 30 constituted the same proportion of all
> voters as they did in 2000 (about 18%).  Young people voted at a much
> higher rate in contested, "battleground" states.2 In the ten most contested
> states, youth turnout was 64%, up 13 percentage points from 2000. In the
> battleground states, the youth share of the electorate was 19%. In the
> remaining 40 states and the District of Columbia, youth turnout was 47% and
> the youth share of the electorate was 18%.  One explanation for the higher
> rates of participation in the battleground states is that there was greater
> voter outreach and political advertising in these states. Current research
> shows that youth participate when they are asked to do so.
> http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/11/4/02741/4708
> 
> "We live under the Confederacy.
> We're a podunk bunch of swaggering
> pious hicks."
> 
>                 --Bruce Sterling
> 
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