Young People and the US Presidential Election

Now that the dust has settled on the US Election we look at how successful Obama and McCain were in engaging young voters

 
Both the UK and the US have struggled with low turnout amongst young people over the last few years. However the 2004 and 2008 American Presidential elections have marked a huge turning point for the US in engaging this demographic. When we look at voter turnout for the 18-24 age group in the US and UK we can see that in 2000 36% of Americans in this category cast a vote, whereas 39% of 18-24 year olds went to the ballot box in the 2001 general election in the UK. The 2004 Presidential election showed a significant increase in 18-24 turnout with 47% casting a ballot. However, the young vote actually declined in the UK in 2005 with only 37% turning out.

 
CIRCLE (the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) have estimated the youth turnout (18-29 year olds) in this year’s Presidential election is at least 52% with 23 million voters under 30. This means there was an increase of 3.4 million votes compared with 2004. They have calculated this “using overall vote count projections by Curtis Gans, director of American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate, latest exit polls, and Census Current Population Survey”. These voters preferred Barack Obama over John McCain by a margin of two-to-one. Dr. Michael McDonald of George Mason University estimated the overall turnout at 61.2% or 130.4 million votes cast, an increase of 1.1 percentage points over the 2004 turnout.

 
In a meta-analysis undertaken by CIRCLE, much of the recent increase in turnout can be attributed to a major investment in mobilising young voters. The study suggested young people were most likely to vote when contact from a political party or candidate was more personalised and interactive. The most effective method was an in-person door knock by a peer followed by phone calls with longer, chattier scripts. Online campaigning was most successful when the young voter can interact or opt-in to the dialogue. Furthermore, mobilising young voters at an early stage can make them more likely to vote in the future (by around 29%) and probably for the same party.

 
Indeed, Barack Obama’s innovative use of social networking tools has allowed local volunteers to meet up and organise “door-knocking campaigns” through the my.barackobama.com website. According to Will Straw, Associate Director for Economic Growth at the Center for American Progress, in Woodsbridge, Virginia, a town of around 30,000 people, he was “part of a small team that knocked on 100 doors and spoke to about 50 people. When we got back to the local headquarters we found that about 7,000 other doors had been knocked on in the area on that day alone.” Considering Obama partly relied on the youth vote to get him into the White House, these volunteers’ in-person door knocks were extremely important.

 
You might be interested to know that ACT (the Professional Association of Citizenship Teaching) in the UK have come up with some ideas to harness enthusiasm from the US Presidential election that teachers can use in Citizenship lessons. This includes a discussion around what young people understand about Obama and the nature of America’s political system.