Young People in the House! (and Senate)

We just knocked out a press release that tells the big story of the election: young Americans came out to make their voices heard, in droves. Eighteen-to-29 year olds made up 13 percent of the people who went to the polls yesterday -- a jump of 20 percent over their portion of the turnout in 2002.

Given the tight margins in so many of the campaigns, that difference may have swung the results in districts all over the country. Read the release to get the full story:

YOUNG VOTER TURNOUT SURGES IN 2006
Participation climbs for second straight major election;
18-29s vote for Democrats by 22-point margin

Young voters turned out to vote in higher numbers and favored Democrats by a wide margin, according to exit polls, providing a major boost to Democratic candidates in yesterday’s House and Senate elections. The 2006 turnout increase follows on the unprecedented 2004 youth turnout and provides further evidence that the new generation coming of age today is more engaged than young voters in recent decades.

Exit polls on CNN’s website confirm that young voters increased their share of the electorate substantially from 2002. In 2002, 18-29s comprised 11% of all votes cast; in yesterday’s 2006 election, 18-29s cast 13% of the votes. This is a significant result, considering that young people are actually a smaller share of the electorate in 2006 than they were in 2002, and also that turnout overall in the 2006 election appears to be up from 2002. The data shows that the increase in voter turnout for 18-29 year olds in 2006 significantly outpaced the overall population turnout increase.

The 2006 results continue the positive trend from 2004, when young voters also outpaced the turnout increase in the presidential election. Turnout for 18-29s climbed more than 9 percentage points in 2004, with 4.6 million more young voters showing up than in 2000, according to the University of Maryland’s youth voter research institute, CIRCLE.

With a confirmed Democratic take-over of the House and the Senate hanging in the balance, young people also have demonstrated their political clout. CNN’s national exit polls show young voters favored Democrats by a 22-point margin, nearly three times the margin that Democrats earned among other age groups.

“Young voters increased their turnout and favored Democrats by large margins,” said Hans Riemer, Rock the Vote’s political director. “They played a major role in the Democratic victory.”

A sample of exit polling from close Senate races around the country shows that the youth vote was key to the Democratic victory.

• Virginia: 52% Democratic, 48% Republican
• Rhode Island: 65% Democratic, 35% Republican
• Pennsylvania: 68% Democratic, 32% Republican
• Ohio: 57% Democratic, 43% Republican
• Missouri: 49% Democratic, 48% Republican
• Montana: 56% Democratic, 44% Republican

Results from House races also show a strong impact for Democrats from the youth vote increase.

With Democrats depending on young voters for their election showing, Republicans will have a strong incentive to win the margin back for 2008. Historical data shows that when a person votes with one party for three consecutive elections, that person stays with the party for life. If Democrats should win the youth vote again in 2008 there could be serious long-term political consequences—as the generation increases its voting turnout over time and becomes a larger share of the electorate.

ABOUT ROCK THE VOTE: Rock the Vote is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to building political power for young people (www.rockthevote.com). Founded in 1990, Rock the Vote helped spark a major increase in young voter turnout in 2004, registering 1.4 million young voters.

Additional data about young voter turnout in 2006 is available at Young Voter Strategies (www.youngvoterstrategies.com).

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Young Americans Dominate 2006 Election

The polls are closed, most of the dust has settled, and two things are clear from the 2006 midterm elections: (1) Democrats can claim and overwhelming victory; and (2) young Americans can claim a lot responsibility for it.

Yesterday, the youth share of the electorate grew substantially from its 2002 level (13% from 11%), the youth voter turnout rate grew from its 2002 level (24% from 20%), and young Americans voted overwhelmingly in favor of Democrats (60% vs. 38%).

For more information how young Americans shaped yesterday's election, check out the statistics from CNN and Young Voter Strategies.

Congressman Chabot, and a lot of students, hit by mistaken identity requirements

This morning, Congressman Steve Chabot went to his Ohio polling place to vote and was turned away by the local registrars. They claimed he did not have an ID with his proper voting address on it.

Chabot went into the polling place at Westwood First Presbyterian Church about 9:30 a.m. and pulled out his Ohio driver’s license to show the poll workers. They looked at his license, and told the congressman that, even though they know perfectly well who he is, his driver’s license was issued to his business office, not his home, which is his voting address.

Chabot ran home and got a Social Security statement and some other documents and returned to vote. Afterwards he said, "I guess this just shows the poll workers are really doing their job."

In fact, the registrars were WRONG.

The same thing happened to students at the University of Ohio - Columbus. Reports came in from the field that they were being turned away for not having ID's with their current address on them. Young Voter Strategies, which had an intrepid staffer on the ground there, jumped into action, contacting the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, which went out to talk to the registrars. By 11AM, everything had been straightened out.

But how many young voters had already been turned away? According to MASS-PIRG, by 11AM, in one student dominated precinct they had already broken their previous mid-term turnout record for the entire day!

Ohio's new laws say you must have a current identification. It does not say that your identification must have your current address. Those are two different things.

Imagine, for example, students who have an OH drivers license from the home where they grew up, but registered to vote from their home at school. They're not required to get a new drivers license, and their license is in fact current. But the registrar would have turned them away.

If you hear about any of these kinds of problems at the polls, call 866 OUR VOTE to get help and post your story at our Facebook page and at VoterStory.

Young Voter Stats

- According to Harvard University’s Institute of Politics (IOP), nearly a third (32%) of 18 to 24 year olds “definitely” plan on voting in the November 2006 midterm elections. Among all 18 to 24 year olds surveyed, the subgroup most likely to vote on November 7 are recent college graduates (45% say they will definitely vote), while those who have never attended college or are still in high school are the least likely.
http://www.iop.harvard.edu/pdfs/survey/fall_2006_release.pdf

- In the most recent midterm election in 2002, 22% of young adults voted. However, the best comparison to this year's election may be the 1994 midterm, because it was the last midterm to follow a similar surge in youth voting. In 1994, 26% of 18- to 29-year olds voted.
http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/FactSheets/FS_FastFacts2006/us_final.pdf

- It is estimated that there are 41.9 million young people (18-29) eligible to vote in 2006, compared to 158.2 million eligible adults age 30 and older. In 2002, 8.9 million young people voted in the midterm election (a 10% share of all voters, and a 22% Citizen Voter Turnout Rate). In 1994, 10.4 million young people voted in the election (a 12% share of all voters, and a 26% Citizen Voter Turnout Rate).
http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/FactSheets/FS_FastFacts2006/us_final.pdf

- In 2002, the three states with the highest level of youth voter turnout were Minnesota (45%), South Dakota (36%), and Alaska (34%). In contrast, the three states with the lowest voter turnout rates among young people in 2002 were Delaware (15%), West Virginia (15%) and Arizona (14%). It is likely that differences in electoral participation among young people across states was driven by high profile gubernatorial and Senate races and state wide initiatives in midterm years. In 2006, these factors again may help drive young people to the polls.
http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/FactSheets/FS_Youth_Voting_State_by_State_18-29.pdf

- In 2006, young people were more likely than adults 30 and older to identify as strictly independents (26% vs. 18%) and less likely to identify as Republicans (28% vs. 35%). Compared to 2002, somewhat more young adults are identifying as independents (up 2 points) though slightly fewer identify as Democrats (down 1 point).
http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/FactSheets/FS_FastFacts2006/us_final.pdf

- In the IOP’s poll, 52% of likely young voters (18-24) said they favor a Congress controlled by Democrats following the November elections, with a much lower amount favoring Republican control (29%). The remaining nineteen percent said they have no preference.
http://www.iop.harvard.edu/pdfs/survey/fall_2006_release.pdf

Tell us about your first time

The Associated Press' "asap" released a podcast yesterday in which a number of first-time voters talk about what it's like to vote for the first time. Whether you're voting for the first time today or you just want to recall the emotions you felt the first time you stepped into the voting booth, it's worth a listen. Check it out at http://asap.ap.org/stories/995113.s

Voter Story: Make Sure Every Vote Counts

There's a new "widget" circulating on the web that is designed to help make sure every vote is counted on Election Day.

VoterStory.org has been created as an open-source tool for the puropose of recording and reporting problems at the polls. Its widget, which it is distributing for free online, allows people who are having trouble voting or are being denied their right to vote to post their problem online for distribution to voter-advocate groups standing by to assist them.

The effort, undertaken by the Funders' Committee for Civic Participation and with support from Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, and the Open Society Institute, stems from "the dramatic increase of electronic voting machines and longstanding concerns about the integrity of the democratic process." Although I hope that this election unfolds without a hitch, it's reassuring to know that VoterStory.org is there to help incase it doesn't. If you can, please help spread the word about VoterStory.org so that, if something does go wrong on November 7, people are prepared to handle it.

ISO: Single Female Voters

Looks like unmarried women are among the "must-get" voters this election season, if efforts to get more of them to the polls are successful. That's a big "if."

I have to admit, I can't imagine not voting. Maybe that comes from being raised by parents who lived through the civil rights movement. So, I was a little surprised to learn that some 20 million unmarried women didn't vote in 2004.

"They are the fastest growing demographic group in this country," said Page Gardner, president of Women's Voices Women Vote, the group that produced the ad in the story linked to above.

"In 2004 they were 22 percent of the electorate yet there were still 20 million unmarried women who did not vote," she said. "If they voted in higher numbers ... they could literally help determine the agenda in this country.

Check out the rather humorous, somewhat titillating, ads produced by Women's Voices Women Vote (WVWV). According to their mission statement and FAQ, WVWV is a non-partisan group that doesn't endorse candidates or advocate specific issues, but just focuses on getting more unmarried women to vote.

There's some conventional wisdom as to which way the unmarried female demographic "breaks" politically, but the huge number of single women who abstained from voting before are something of a cipher. How they "break" if they get to the polls may depend on how successful candidates are at appealing to them.

Single women aren't the only group of people primed for political engagement this year. Judy Sheppard, Matthew Sheppard's mother, is touring college campuses to encourage young people to vote. And earlier this month a study came out showing that African American youth are very politically engaged and most likely to vote regularly.