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Expectations for the youth vote often have led to disappointment in recent elections. Estimates on voter turnout have left mixed opinions about the performance of young voters this year. The expected tsunami of college voters and other young Americans at the polls didn’t happen, but in some ways, the Nov. 4 election of Barack Obama may have signaled an important change in the social engagement of a generation mired in a reputation for being apathetic.
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Winona State University student Mollie McGeary, 19, right, takes a ballot from election judge Helen Braatz Tuesday while voting at Lake Lodge in Winona.
(Photo by Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News) |
Some are calling it a landmark event.
“I think this will be a moment that defines a political generation,” Winona State University political science professor Kara Lindaman said.
The numbers
About 18 percent of people younger than 30 voted in the presidential election, only a modest increase from both 2000 and 2004. Local college-age voters appear to have followed a similar trend.
Turnout at Winona precincts with a traditionally high number of college voters — Lake Lodge, Madison Elementary and Kryzsko Commons on WSU’s campus, among others — was not significantly higher this year compared with 2004. There also was not a significant increase in same-day registration, a tool many students use to vote in Winona if they are from out of state and cannot get home to vote on Election Day.
Those numbers suggest that WSU and Saint Mary’s University students did not vote by a considerably larger margin than in recent elections.
“The numbers are very similar, and we actually had more same-day registration results in 2004,” Winona County Auditor Cherie MacLennan said.
But inside those numbers may be another story. Obama won the youth vote by about 66 percent to John McCain’s 31 percent, besting previous Democratic candidates’ John Kerry and Al Gore’s 54 percent and 48 percent ,respectively. Part of that may be because of the Obama campaign’s aggressive targeting of college students, but it also may indicate a generational shift.
Gearing up
College Democrats at WSU worked closely with the presidential campaign’s Minnesota youth director over the summer, creating a strategy for registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. Ian Galchutt, president of WSU’s College Democrats, said the organization probably registered more than 1,000 students and created a phone list to remind people to vote.
But it was the turnout and excitement at College Democrat meetings that stood out to Galchutt. Last spring, meetings were typically populated by a handful of students. Momentum built throughout the fall semester, and, by the home stretch, the room the group used was packed to the brim with enthusiastic volunteers.
“By Election Day, there were so many people showing up that I didn’t even know them. I’d never met them,” he said.
Less partisan
Youth vote is typically suppressed less by apathy than by the basic construct of politics and even how the ballot is created, Lindaman said. One of the strongest indicators of voter turnout is party identification, she said.
Young people tend to be less partisan than their elders, identifying more with candidates than parties, a process Lindaman referred to as de-alignment from traditional party identification.
Turnout for young voters may not have been much proportionally higher compared with other voting blocs this year, but more young people overall did vote this year. That increase, because of the heavy tilt toward Obama among those voters, indicates a particular excitement among young Americans about electing the nation’s first black president, unsurprising for a generation heralded for its diversity and multicultural views.
A ‘duty’ generation
Yet Lindaman said much of Obama’s support may have been from one particular element of his message, which calls young Americans to service. Obama has proposed college tuition relief for students who devote parts of their careers to national service, either in the military, Peace Corps or other organizations. That message speaks loudly to a generation Lindaman refers to as the “duty-based” generation.
“This generation is more active in a participatory way, volunteering for not-for-profits or as elections judges,” she said. “So when Obama talks about public service, I think it really feeds into this political generation that define themselves through engagement.”
Lindaman and fellow WSU professor Ruth Charles this year helped recruit students as election judges — officials responsible for making sure elections are fairly and properly run — to prove that getting students involved in the process beyond voting fosters a stronger commitment to community and social engagement. Almost 80 students signed up for the program, were trained and then dispersed throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin.
It’s that sense of duty Lindaman said is the defining factor of the generation often referred to as Generation Y, or the Millennials. The 2008 voting turnout may not have been astronomic, but it may have marked a shift in how young people view civic engagement and the political process.
Caitlin Froh, 19, a WSU student who voted on Nov. 4 for the first time, registered at her precinct. She had missed the deadline for absentee voting in her home state of Wisconsin, and only made her mind up on who she was voting for weeks before the election.
But she made sure she made it to the polls.
“I feel it’s a duty as a citizen to vote,” she said.
Nolan Rosenkrans may be reached at (507) 453-3519 or at nolan.rosenkrans@lee.net.
