More on the 2004 youth vote surge
The Census Data is out! It provides more scientific depth or confirmation to what we've been saying all along: young people totally rocked the vote in 2004.
The youth voter research institute CIRCLE has the goods, focusing on the 18-24 age group.
Bottom line: youth voter turnout surged more than ANY other age group. The increase also was really driven by the surge in voting among young African Americans and Latinos, who caused the overall age group to swing to Kerry.
Update: Great article from the Rocky Mountain News....
The youth voter research institute CIRCLE has the goods, focusing on the 18-24 age group.
Bottom line: youth voter turnout surged more than ANY other age group. The increase also was really driven by the surge in voting among young African Americans and Latinos, who caused the overall age group to swing to Kerry.
Update: Great article from the Rocky Mountain News....
posted by Hans Riemer at 11:12 AM
3 Comments:
I laugh and laugh.
The way Hans puts it, you'd think that Rock the Vote enginnered a giant youth uprising that stuck it to the establishment and handed Kerry a huge chunk of the vote.
As usual, Reimer is wrong. Despite all of Rock the Vote's fear mongering about a "draft", despite all of Reimer's fear mongering about Social Security (which he still continues to do this day, based off of faulty arguments), despite all of the anti-Bush smear that Rock the Vote threw around for months prior to the election.....Kerry received only 54% of the youth vote, and Bush STILL got 46%.
This "massive upsurge" of votes in the African American and Latino populations may have been true, but that doesn't mean they were the reason Kerry won the demographic. Democrats have traditionally taken the demographic, and given all of the slime organizatons like RTV were throwing around, Kerry should have won 70-30%- but unfortunately for folks like Hans, almost half of the youth didn't listen to their smear.
77% of the African American population in the youth group voting for Kerry is not a success for the Democrats. A success would have been 90/10 like the standard population. Young minorities (of which I am a part of) are slowly starting to realize that liberal policy (especially economically and educationally) does little to further our status and well-being in today's society, and thus you're seeing a gradual shift to the GOP. Latinos are even stronger in this shift, especially in Florida, where they handed the state to President Bush.
And, well, who can blame them? Why vote for a party that has no solution for solving Social Security's problems, and a party that supports a failed status quo system that hurts minorities moreso than whites? People are getting the message, and the youth is doing the exact thing that folks like Hans Reimer and the rest of the Rock the Vote crew never wanted them to do:
Fight back.
Against Rock the Vote and the liberal establishment, that is.
Um, Dude. Take a chill pill. Young people turned out in record numbers and proved the press wrong. Given the increase there were probably more voters for Ds and Rs than there were in 2000.
I am just psyched turnout went up.
I agree, as long as voter turnout in our demographic is up we will no longer be stuck in the back seat when it comes to political discourse in the capital. I might not like Hans' view on SS and a few other issues (fake draft), but if RTV helped increase voter turnout they do deserve credit.
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