Youth vote down significantly in 2012 elections, erasing much of gains in 2004/2008

The 2012 Current Population Survey November supplement has now been released which enables one to examine voting patterns by different racial and ethnic groups and different age groups.

Youth turnout among those ages 18-24 dropped 7.3 percentage points from 2008 to 2012, to 41.2%. This contravenes a CIRCLE report that preliminary turnout in 2012 was closer to 50%. [These declines have undone a lot of the gains in youth turnout in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections.]

If one breaks it down by racial origin, among all racial groups, voting rates for 18-24 year olds were down from 2008 to 2012, declining by 7.4% for non-Hispanic whites, 4.6% for Hispanics and 6.7% for blacks.  This reverses patterns seen in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections where the biggest voting increases came from 18-24 year olds.  For example, from 2004 to 2008, Hispanic 18-24 year olds and black 18-24 year olds increased their voting rates by 5.8% and 8.3% respectively.

Fig. 4 from Census Report “The Diversifying Electorate…” (5/2013)

CIRCLE noted earlier that the National Exit Poll from November 2012 estimated that these young people represented 19% of the voters and that  President Obama captured 60% of their votes compared to 37% for Romney. CIRCLE pointed out that if young people had stayed home or if Romney had captured half of the youth vote in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia, he would have won  the presidency.  The youth vote was also decisive in Obama’s 2008 victory.

Among adults, non-white voter turnout increased in 2012: more of that story here.  Blacks voted in 2012 at higher rates than whites for the first time since 1996.  Bad news for Republicans is that, according to the CPS, the share of white votes declined in every one of the battleground states in 2012 (other than Iowa).  As Nate Silver has noted (on 538 Blog), the share of non-white votes in battleground states makes a difference in changing the election results, unless one assumes that Republicans are suddenly going to start doing a better job of appealing to non-white groups.

Census reports that the overall turnout (youth and adults) was down somewhat in 2012 as well: from 63.8% in 2008 to 61.8% in 2012.  Michael McDonald, using different measures that rely not on self-reports but on ballots cast by state finds a similar pattern: 61.6% of those eligible to vote voted in 2008 and that declined to 58.2% in 2012 (a decrease of 3.4 percentage points or a decline of 5.6%).

(Michael McDonald)

There was some speculation in November that Hurricane Sandy was to blame.  While turnout declined substantially in Eastern states devastated by Hurricane Sandy,  turnout also declined in most states nation-wide, making it dubious that one can lay the blame for lower turnout on Sandy.

For more on racial patterns in 2012 turnout and age-based patterns see the Census report on this topic.

The Stained-Glass Ceiling of Religious Tolerance

[also cross-posted on AmericanGrace blog]

American Grace co-author David Campbell has an Op-Ed in today’s USA Today (with John C. Green and J. Quin Monson) entitled “Tolerance? We have a ways to go”.

The Op-Ed sizes up the chances of Republican presidential aspirant Mitt Romney in 2012 by examining public opinion regarding religious tolerance and America’s de facto “stained glass ceiling”.  Interestingly, those  most knowledgeable about Mormonism (Latter-Day Saints) were least likely to be intolerant, regardless of whether they were LDS themselves.

Read Op-Ed here.

AMERICAN GRACE: How Religion Is Reshaping Our Civic and Political Lives By David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam, will be published in 2010.

What Next for the Obama Network? Four Critical Questions

(Will the Obama network become an Administrative megaphone or a 2-way street?) (photo by Irene Roxanne)

Guest Post by Thad Williamson: There can be little question that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign marked a seismic event in the history of American political participation, an event that is incredibly interesting in its own right and that may have long-term repercussions for the future trajectory of civic engagement in America.

Here in Richmond, Virginia, due to the efforts of the Obama campaign, voter rolls swelled by 18% (an increase of over 18,000 voters) between the February primary and Election Day last week. Voter turnout was up roughly 25% across the city compared to 2004, and Obama compiled a voted margin in this strongly Democratic city (about 54,500) nearly twice as high as that mustered by John Kerry (29,000 votes) four years ago.

Any political scientist would consider an event or factor capable of increasing political participation by 20-25% in a single election cycle, holding other factors constant, a very big deal. And so the Obama campaign is!

But perhaps what is most interesting about the Obama campaign is the reminder it provides that human behavior is not pre-determined by regression models, or by past behavior. Prior to this year, few would have believed that turnout in the city’s four predominantly African-American council districts, neighborhoods with historically low voting rates, would be over 40% higher than in 2004. Nor were there any good recent examples in Richmond of sustained, multi-racial organizing involving diverse citizens working side-by-side in horizontal relationships towards a shared goal.

The Obama campaign changed both those facts, and consequently this city is now a different place politically. Indeed, we are living in a rare moment where the future seems open and the possibility of “change” of various kinds seems very real.

How the Obama campaign might affect the long-term civic culture of the United States is a very open question, however. Will the networks and contacts and relationships established during the campaign endure, and what shape will they take?

We can break that overarching question down into four more specific ones.

The first has to do with how the vast civic network established by the Obama campaign might affect his administration’s governance. It has been reported this week that the Obama camp has a list of 11 million email addresses (not to be confused with 11 million distinct people!) , and the transition team is soliciting yet more addresses at its change.gov website.

The obvious use towards which that list might be put is to exert pressure on Congress to pass the Obama Administration’s legislative proposals. Such pressure would be useful not just in persuading the odd recalcitrant Republican senator (and/or Joe Lieberman!) from blocking legislative progress through filibusters, but in ensuring that the Democrats themselves do not lose their nerve and water down proposals threatening to established interests.

No one imagines, for instance, that it will be possible to pass meaningful health care reform without encountering determined resistance from some in the insurance industry as well as from conservatives opposed for philosophical reasons.

Obama will be determined to avoid a repeat of 1993-94 when the Clintons advanced an ambitious reform agenda without having the foot soldiers or public enthusiasm to advocate effectively for the plan. The entire theory of Obama’s campaign has been that grassroots organization will be required not just to win the election but to pass meaningful legislation.

All signs indicate that the new administration intends to aggressively enlist its supporters in the legislative struggles ahead, and thereby inaugurate a new mode of presidential governing.

But this raises a second, more difficult, question: Can those same mobilized networks of supporters be used to hold President Obama accountable? Will the administration allow repeats of this summer, when his own website was the venue for a vocal protest against the candidate’s vote for the FISA granting retroactive  immunity to telecoms? Will generally supportive groups like moveon.org be willing to hold Obama’s feet to the fire should he change positions or strategy? Will Obama supporters move to set up their own groups independent of the campaign/administration’s organizational infrastructure?

Those are difficult but important questions going forward. The challenge is how to assure that the potential for direct communication between the White House and supportive voters becomes not just a one-way but a two-way dialogue. That challenge is complicated by the fact that Obama supporters will surely disagree among themselves regarding when they should be willing to call the president out loud and clear when he goes astray and when they should be willing to accept departures from campaign promises as a matter of pragmatism.

Here we might expect over time a divide (of sorts) to emerge between supporters who are primarily attracted to Barack Obama as an individual leader and are willing to support him and trust his judgment almost unconditionally, and those who see him as a vehicle for advancing values they care about. (That dichotomy is overdrawn of course; I don’t know of any strong progressive supporters of Obama who don’t also admire his personal qualities, at least to some degree.)

A third question is whether and how the networks established by the Obama campaign at the local level might generate new forms of cross-cutting social and civic capital that facilitate progressive action and changes in specific places. The question is particularly pertinent here in Richmond, where there is great need for a mobilized civic network involving African-Americans, Hispanics, and whites from multiple parts of the city.

What happens in Richmond and in similar places will depend on the actions and steps these former Obama volunteers take themselves to keep the network going. I’m pleased to report that the email network of (demographically diverse) campaign volunteers I’m on in Richmond has already had one community picnic , with more events planned going forward; how all this might translate into future politically significant efforts remains to be seen. While it’s not realistic to think that all or even most of the millions of people who showed up to volunteer for Obama in their local community (some of whom, as in Richmond, are inherently transient college students) will want to remain engaged in local networks, it’s very possible that local core groups of permanent residents who are energized by the campaign and have an appetite for more will lead the way in creating new progressive civic groups with real staying power.

The fourth question is how the Obama model of campaigning will affect the Democratic Party as an institution going forward.

Marshall Ganz, who did incredible work in bringing Obama’s community organizing strategy to life, rightly points out that the Democratic Party is hardly a monolithic institution. Indeed, in many localities, it has often been a virtually empty shell (a situation that Howard Dean began to rectify with his 50-state strategy). Nonetheless, it is (as Ganz puts it) a critical “venue” for political contestation; and the Party does have a financial and legal infrastructure which can be used (as the Obama campaign did) in support of an organizing approach to electoral politics.

Obama has, ironically, an opportunity to take top-down steps to re-organize the Democratic Party into an institution that encourages and facilitates bottom-up grassroots campaigns. But he will have to decide how much energy to put into that project, and how to balance investing in future Democratic electoral success with his post-partisan stance. Moreover, it remains to be seen whether the Obama model of inspired grassroots organizers knocking on every last door and making sure every identified supporter has voted can work without a leader as inspirational and attractive as Obama himself.

Indeed, some cautious Democrats may wonder if it’s wise to bank the party’s future hopes on the idea that the civic effort witnessed on Obama’s behalf in 2008 can be duplicated on behalf of another candidate in 2016. Put another way, the question is whether the organizing model of campaign politics since in 2008 should be seen as a one-off event, or something which might perpetuate and build upon itself by force of habit, so that by the time Obama leaves the scene no one will dream of trying to do a national campaign any other way.

My guess is that Obama would prefer for the latter scenario to unfold, but he’ll have to help make it unfold in his de facto role as head of the Democratic Party. Already he has made it possible to at least imagine a Democratic Party that functioned not simply as a vehicle for contesting and winning elections but a tool for organizing communities.

[Very interesting guest post by Thad Williamson. See comment by Tom Sander below]

Obama’s historic election

The election of Saguaro’s Barack Obama as 44th, and first African-American president marks itself as a truly historic election.  It makes me immensely proud to be an American.

Some notes on the election:

1) voter turnout:  preliminary turnout projections put the numbers between 134 million (Curtis Gans, American U.) and 136.6 million Americans (Michael McDonald, GMU).  SEE UPDATED NUMBERS HERE. [Some 30 million voted early and some 105 million were believed to have voted on election day.] This would translate into a voter turnout rate of somewhere around 64%, possibly exceeding the all time rate in 1960, or just below this rate.  [Curtis Gans notes on a Metro Connection interview that turnout was very high among Democrats, but actually lower in 2008 among Republicans; Gans notes that some states actually had lower turnout.  Gans notes that one shouldn’t compare votes cast to number of registered voters since once can manipulate turnout rates depending on how recently they cleaned the voter lists for people who moved or died.]  (You can see from below chart that after declining until 1996, it has shot up in the last 12 years).  [David King, of the Kennedy School believes that voter turnout, without counting the absentee ballots was 64.9%, matching the 1960 rates and could rise higher.)  One can see this as half-full or half-empty;  it is disconcerting that even in an election with such important consequences for the future of the nation, and with such compelling personalities (Obama and Palin), and with unprecedented sums spent on advertising and GOTV (get out the vote) efforts, still over a 1/3 of all eligible Americans did not vote.  But nonetheless, it is a remarkable turnaround in the last 12 years.  Curtis Gans thinks that the trends of civic disengagement from voting are generally occurring and although he hopes Obama brings in a new era of civic engagement, he thinks we shouldn’t infer too much from a couple of close elections in 2000-2008.

(Source: Michael McDonald, GMU)

2) youth vote:  Part of the story in the resurgence is youth voting.  We witnessed  huge increases in primary voting among younger voters 18-29 year olds (in many cases doubling or tripling number of youth votes 4-8 years ago in the primaries).  We have written  about what might be the beginning of a 9-11 Generation among youth, preliminary reports from CIRCLE were that youth 18-29 did not make up an increased percentage of voters in the 2008 general election [since all age groups were increasing their voter turnout, the youth’s share stayed constant at about 17%).  SEE UPDATED NUMBERS HERE. But it appears that the youth are continuing to turn out at increasing rates (from 37% in 1996 to 41% in 2000 to 48% in 2004 to 49-54% in 2008). [CIRCLE is still projecting the youth turnout from the 2008 election; we’ll fill this in when they come in with a definite number, but it could be the second highest youth turnout ever since 1972 when it was 54.5%.]  David King at the Kennedy School says the data indicates it was the highest turnout for 18 year-olds since 1972. Whether the glass is half full or half empty is a matter of interpretation;  voting rates for youth are still significantly below voting rates for seniors, for example.  And young people voted overwhelmingly for Obama.  [See the NYT’s story “Youth Turnout up by 2 Million from 2004“]

3) mobilizing new people into the political process:  2008 was an unprecedented year in terms of the numbers of volunteers and donors to the Obama campaign, and an exquisite combination of “high-tech” and “high-touch” in his campaign (with tens of thousands of door-to-door canvassers coupled with a highly sophisticated use of e-mail, texting, use of cellphone, and websites).  [We’ve written about that earlier here and here. ] But with the massive increases in the number of registered Americans, preliminary reports were that first-time voters were not noticeably higher than they were in 2004 as a percentage of the voters (even though their absolute numbers increased, since the total number of voters increased).  In the process of his campaign, he spurred 50,000 local events, 1.5 million volunteers on the web, 8,000 web-based affinity groups, and 3.1 million donors who contributed almost $700 million to his campaign. It didn’t hut that Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes helped worked for the Obama campaign. [My colleague David Lazer talks about in “Obama’s Machine” [Forbes], how Obama might unleash this network in the future to his advantage.]

4) What will new Obama administration look like?  What will be their priorities?

In some regards, it is too soon to tell.  But there have been some inklings of important strands announced by Barack on the stump, above and beyond his obvious focus on energy independence, ending the war in Iraq and trying to make the economy work again.

– Focus on sacrifice: Alexandra Marks article in Christian Science Monitor discussed this theme which Obama also returned to in his speech last night from Chicago.

Obama in his victory speech: “So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers — in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.”

– Role of the citizen:  Mentioning Obama’s focus, Michael Sandel noted “…[A] new politics of the common good can’t be only about government and markets. “It must also be about a new patriotism — about what it means to be a citizen.”  (From Thomas Friedman’s column, “Finishing Our Work”, NYT, 11/5/08)

From Obama’s victory speech: “[The campaign victory] was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth….[A]bove all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand….This victory alone is not the change we seek — it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.”

– Focus on service:  from Barack’s mention of a bold plan for AmeriCorps expansion as a campaign promise, to his appearing in the ServiceSummit with John McCain and Richard Stengel of TIME, to his invocation of service in his victory speech.  [As Michael Sandel noted, “This is the deepest chord Obama’s campaign evoked. The biggest applause line in his stump speech was the one that said every American will have a chance to go to college provided he or she performs a period of national service — in the military, in the Peace Corps or in the community. Obama’s campaign tapped a dormant civic idealism, a hunger among Americans to serve a cause greater than themselves, a yearning to be citizens again.” (Friedman’s column, “Finishing Our Work”, 11/5/08)]

– Slate magazine’s John Dickerson also had an interesting post on  6 ways that Obama could show he is a new type of leader

And E.J. Dionne (who was a fellow member of Saguaro with Barack) wrote an op-ed today “A New Era for America” talking about how he expects that in the same way as Barack completely recast the campaign process, he will recast politics.

Yes, it is time to hope again….Time to hope that the era of racial backlash and wedge politics is over. Time to imagine that the patriotism of dissenters will no longer be questioned and that the world will no longer be divided between “values voters” and those with no moral compass. Time to expect that an ideological label will no longer be enough to disqualify a politician….Above all, it is time to celebrate the country’s wholehearted embrace of democracy, reflected in the intense engagement of Americans in this campaign and the outpouring to the polls all over the nation…. Obama inherits challenges that could overwhelm any leader and faces constraints that will tax even his exceptional political skills. But the crisis affords him an opportunity granted few presidents to reshape the country’s assumptions, change the terms of debate and transform our politics. The way he campaigned and the way he won suggest that he intends to do just that.

Dramatically Increased youth turnout on Super Tuesday

With the exception of NY, most of the primary states witnessed dramatically more active youth participation in the primaries than in 2000 with many states doubling, tripling or even quintupling their under-30 voter turnout (as a percentage of votes cast).

– In my home state of Massachusetts, the youth vote in the 2008 primary doubled from the 2000 with an estimate that 25% voters under age 30 voted this year, compared with 11% in the 2000 primary.

– In Tennessee the youth vote quintupled from 3% in 2000 to 15% on Super Tuesday.

– In Georgia, 280,000 voters under age 30 voted on Super Tuesday, a tripling in the turnout rate to 21% from the 7% that voted in the 2000 Georgia primary.

– The youth vote tripled in Missouri, and Oklahoma and doubled in Connecticut relative to 2000.

All these states also saw big increases in the NUMBERS of youth voting, but increases in the number of youth voting vs. 2000 are less impressive since the race in 2008 is far more competitive than the primaries in 2000 that led to Al Gore’s nomination, leading more voters to vote, regardless of their age.  But the increase in youth turnout (as a percentage of all votes cast) is much more impressive, since there is no inherent reason to believe that competitive races would boost young adult turnout more than other age demographics.

NY was a noticeable exception where the youth vote remained flat at 12%.

I haven’t seen the data, but Steven Stark, Boston Phoenix blogger and Real Politics contributor, asserted that in Massachusetts, youth voter turnout was up in college towns, but not elsewhere.  If this was true, I’m not sure if the increases in these other states also reflect increases most heavily centered on college towns.

CIRCLE (the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) released a helpful summary report of youth voting here.

That’s the glass half-full picture, but it is important to note that even with these dramatic gains in youth turnout, youth under age 30 are still participating at a fraction (sometimes less than half) of the rate of other adult Americans.  For example,  in OK 14% of youth under 30 voting vs. 33% overall, or 11% of youth under 30 in Arkansas vs. 25% overall turnout or 18% youth turnout in Illinois vs. 32% overall.

So despite youth turning out at higher rates, they are still having far less voice than their share of the population would signify.  It’s as if you imagined this demographic speaking through a megaphone turned the wrong way so whatever they say becomes weaker not stronger.  I hope the youth vote increases can continue so they can eventually have the same clout that they should and their inspiration, passion, vision, environmentalism and tolerance can translate into national leadership that accords with their values.

Note: CIRCLE indicates that these are all based on estimates. “Because there is no actual count of the number of votes cast by young people in the primaries, we can only estimate their level of participation. Our turnout estimates are based on early vote tallies reported by the media, the share of voters who are young calculated by the National Election Pool exit/entrance polls, and an estimate of the eligible voting population obtained from the Census Current Population Survey (CPS). The 2008 voter turnout rate may rise as more votes are tallied. (The early vote tally does not include such votes as absentee ballots and provisional ballots.) As a result, our 2008 turnout rate likely underestimates the level of participation in the 2008 Super Tuesday primaries.”