Where Are the Young People?
After all the froth and fuss about Obama, only 12% of those voting are under 30, compared to 22% who are over 65 (if I understand these ABC figures correctly). The result: Hillary’s cleaning up, except in the black South. She’s won both New York and California.
Where are the young people? Studying for exams? Hung over from the Super Bowl? Distracted by videogames, angst and sex? On ABC they’re talking about bribing them with pizza and iPods. If I were under 30 I’d be deeply insulted, but where are they?
I had decided to go with the young — to trust the wisdom of passion instead of the wisdom of prudence this time — and now it seems they may not be going anywhere.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some numbers on that, I do feel young people are more interested (but not interested enough). I can’t really blame my generation (or younger since I think I am X not Y, I am 29) more than others since they didn’t vote either. But still I had hoped they would vote more, just like I hoped they would have voted way more in 2004.
Yeah, I want to see numbers on that too. Link please.
Over 65 is the whitest demographic group of voters. Those under 30 is the least white demographic group.
You cannot role ages without looking at gender, ethnicity.
Per the census:
18-30 = about 16.5% of the population
65+ = about 12.5%
Here’s a guess: young voters aren’t getting lots of free stuff from the government. So what do they have to lose by staying home?
They are where they always are. This was once again the MSM trying to determine the out come of the elections.
However things are looking up for Obama because the next 3 primaries are most likely all going to fall for Obama which will put him into the delegate lead.
I think why Hillary can make a case for this Primary, the problem is that perception is going to be hard to overcome. GOP states are about 2x those of democratic states. He is winning all the states that fall gop in the election and while those might not be delegate rich the perception is that he is stomping Hillary and should continue on his march to the White House.
OK, looking for a link. It was something I heard on ABC last night …
(Abrisaham, are you kosher or not? Is it a bris or a ham? Sorry, inside joke. From an outsider.)
As an amusing byproduct of the search for a link I learned what the World Socialist Web Site thinks of Obama:
As is often the case, a huge youth vote was anticipated:
This from the San Francisco Chronicle is anecdotal, but discouraging. After some talk about "Obama fever" and young Clinton supporters’ annoyance with it:
Jeez. It’s not about you.Yahoo! News warned on Monday that
If the turnout was low, that certainly accounts for some of the effect. But I’m having a lot of trouble finding figures, and I’ve got to go. For the moment I’ll leave you with this:
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose….
Ever since the 60’s, it’s always been the young folks who are going to rise up and vote in the new Savior. Except they never do. Record turnout for the young would be somewhat like low turnout for the elderly.
Tully beat me to the quote. How many times does this have to get predicted and then fail to happen before the light bulb goes on? Seriously. It’s a fake evergreen. Young adults just don’t turn out at high rates. When they get married, buy a house, and start paying property taxes, they start voting in higher numbers. When the government starts giving them social security checks and medicare, then you can set your watch by them. It’s a matter of concrete and tangible motivation, not emotional or political appeals. But that’s not as interesting a story as live shots at a spirited campus campus rally, coupled with enthusiastic but grossly unrealistic predictions from people running "get out the youth vote" efforts.
Hey, they turned out for Bill Clinton. And then they haven’t had anybody to believe in since.
Listen, I think your points are fair, but if you look at Iowa, you’ll see that 22% of the voters were between 17 and 29, which was the exact same % as voters above 65. That was a state Obama could spend some time in. The longer he spends in the state, the more youth vote he gets.
As an Obama supporter, what was encouraging for me last night is to see how he didn’t necessarily need the youth vote to basically tie with Hillary. He has made up a lot of ground in the month since Iowa, and we’ve got nearly another month until some of the bigger delegate states. Hillary’s people are already spinning that she’ll lose the contests before this time.
Be patient amba.
Er, Iowa was a caucus, not an election. You don’t vote at a caucus, you group in herds–something that comes naturally to the "youth vote." It’s a lot easier to get kids to caucus. Especially at the start of campaign season when the candidates are still bright and shiny. Not the same as dragging them out in November after the mud wars.
Clinton got a boost in ‘92, but it vanished in ‘96. He wasn’t shiny anymore. Youth turned out in 2004 in numbers higher than 1992–but didn’t swing any races, as they were just as split as their elders.
Could they maybe text in their votes? Or maybe we can make "Election 2008" one of their friends on MySpace?