New York – The November 2010 mid-term elections were considered to be something of a sweep for the Republicans, as they won over control of at least 239 seats in the House of Representatives. The mid-term elections are important to some, however, proved to be less important to others, especially, the youth.
Widespread masses of youth and adults alike worked to help educate and learn about the 2008 presidential campaign, with a particularly large Obama following. So the question is, where has this political youthful energy gone? According to Steven Peterson, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Penn State University, the answer lies in the fact that the youth are generally more excited about the presidential elections.
“They follow it more, and there’s a greater political interest, so there’s a greater overall turnout to vote,” Peterson said.
Peterson has conducted research on the youth vote in recent and past elections, and studied voting behavior data from American national election studies. He also commented on another aspect of the youth vote, being that if the youth population is motivated to vote, they will.
"The difference in the presidential election from the mid-term election is that there was an effort to turn out the youth vote by Obama's campaign," Peterson said.
Editor in chief of The Daily Collegian, Elizabeth Murphy, had a comment or two to say about youth campaigning on college campuses, before the election even took place: “We have a good amount of groups who are very much engaged and energized. But, in terms of the midterm election, I’m not sure there’s going to be as much of a fervor or engagement with campus at large.”
Murphy also touched on the fact that in 2008, campaign representatives asked students once or twice a day if they were registered to vote. While this was prevalent in the presidential campaign, the same could not be said for the mid-term elections.
According to Murphy, one of the biggest concerns for college youth is the job market.
“You know, we're paying a lot, thousands of dollars, to go to school for four-years-plus to find a job,” Murphy said. “No one wants to go back to mom's basement after grabbing their degree. So, I think that's something that people really want to see a solution and an answer to.”
The problem is, that those sorts of issues were not widely addressed by candidates, which is one explanation as to why many students in Universities especially, did not feel the urge to vote.
“I think it's unfortunate, but at least at Penn State's campus, there isn't this huge feeling that people need to head out and hit the polls, and, you know, make their voice heard and vote,” Murphy said.
Another interesting notion was how Democratic candidates fell under the shadow of Obama, when it came to reaching out to youth voters. That is to say, Obama was left responsible for rallying the youth, (due to his widespread following from the 2008 elections).
However, other political candidates saw the efforts of the White House to rally youth voters for the democrats, as a last minute “desperate” attempt, according to the Daily Caller.
Celebrities play a large role in helping with the youth vote. Obama’s campaign efforts from his own team, paired with the wave of celebrity efforts that followed, it was difficult as a member of the youth in society, to not be affected or to not notice. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook constantly reminded users to vote, and more importantly, helped educate users about each candidate/political party.
Contrastingly, major media groups that were major frontrunners for helping the youth get involved politically, decided to back down in the 2010 midterms. MTV decided to gear all their efforts towards pop music elections instead, which encouraged youth to vote for different music celebrities. Pop star president, pop star vice president, senate, and House of Representatives, were amongst the roles to vote for.
The ultimate goal out of this voting tactic on MTV’s part was to encourage youth to go out and vote in the mid-term elections too. An intern from MTV, when asked about this tactic, said, “Well yes, that was the goal. It’s just hard to reach out to a whole country when every state has it’s own race going on. We decided that this would be a better way at universalizing the election.”
MTV’s attempts to get the youth encouraged to vote may have helped a certain amount, but ultimately didn’t do too much. According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Roughly 20 percent of American under the age of 30 voted in Tuesday’s midterm elections…Get-out-the-vote groups blamed the decline on candidates’ failure to engage young voters.”
In order to have success with the youth population of voters, candidates could have put a little bit more effort into rallying that age group. However, Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote, believed that candidates had failed to tailor their messages to young voters, and instead alienated them with attack ads. “Young voters…are not motivated by anger in the way that Tea Party members are.”
According to a recent Gallup poll, the number of 18-29 year olds who have actually put thought into the mid-term election, plummeted 56 percent, and youth voter turnout slid down to 32 in the Massachusetts senatorial election last January.
The New York Times stated that, “Older voters are significantly more enthusiastic about voting this year than young voters.” This could happen for a number of reasons. Older voters have more to relate to older candidates, because of the obvious reasons like age and generational similarities.
However, the youth find little to relate to when it comes to older candidates. The issues being presented are different, (not necessarily unimportant, but affect a different demographic and age group of people within this country) and it’s much harder for youth voters to relate.
A candidate like Obama on the ballot is much easier to vote for not only because of all the campaigning that occurred with his election, but also because of the instant connection that occurs with a younger candidate. Even if he weren’t a democrat, (studies show that younger voters tend to mostly vote Democratic, especially in the most recent years) Obama would have still most likely won over the youth vote, due to proper campaigning and youth rallying.
“I think the primary difference in this particular election is that more young voters who voted in 2008 were motivated specifically by Obama, but he wasn’t on the ballot this year so some of them felt less motivated to turn out,” Keli Goff, political analyst, author and blogger. Goff is a political expert and identified that the most politically active youth supporters existed in the South, rather than in major cities like New York City and Los Angeles.
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