Youth vote

(noun)

The youth vote is a political term used primarily in the United States to describe 18 to 29-year-olds and their voting habits.

Related Terms

  • Christian right
  • gender gap

Examples of Youth vote in the following topics:

  • Age and Participation

    • Voter turnout among eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds dropped from 50 percent in 1972, the first presidential election year after the voting age was lowered to eighteen, to 36 percent in 2000.
    • While younger people turn out in elections less often than older people, youth voting has been on the rise in presidential elections since 2004.
    • Young voter turnout rose to 47 percent in 2004 and 51 percent in 2008, partly as a result of voter registration and mobilization efforts by groups like Rock the Vote.
    • The youth vote contributed to the success of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, as young volunteers provided countless hours of campaign support.
    • Barack Obama's presidential campaigns were successful partly as a result of youth participation.
  • Additional Factors: Gender, Age, Religion, Race, and Ethnicity

    • Certain factors like age, gender, race, and religion help describe why people vote and who is more likely to vote.
    • However, the youth vote has been on the rise: turnout among 18 to 24-year-olds was at 36 percent in 2000, but this rose to 47 percent in 2004 and 51 percent in 2008.
    • This rise in youth vote is partly a result of voter registration and mobilization efforts by groups like Rock the Vote.
    • New technology, especially the internet, is also making it easier for candidates to reach the youth.
    • In 2008, 48 percent of Asian Americans turned out to vote.
  • Factors Affecting Voter Turnout

    • When asked why they do not vote, many people report that they have too little free time.
    • Older people tend to vote more than youths, so societies where the average age is somewhat higher, such as Europe; have higher turnouts than somewhat younger countries such as the United States.
    • Making voting compulsory has a direct and dramatic effect on turnout.
    • Ease of voting is a factor in rates of turnout.
    • This suppression can be in the form of unfair tests or requirements to vote.
  • Voting as Political Participation

    • Voting is the most quintessential form of political participation, although many eligible voters do not vote in elections.
    • Every citizen gets one vote that counts equally .
    • Rock the Vote (RTV), a nonpartisan youth mobilization organization, established the first online voter registration initiative in 1992 with official backing from the Congressional Internet Caucus.
    • Still, many people do not vote regularly.
    • Social, cultural, and economic factors can keep people from voting, or sometimes barriers to voting are informal.
  • Voter Turnout

    • Some studies show that a single vote in a voting scheme such as the Electoral College in the United States has an even lower chance of determining the outcome.
    • The decline in voting has also accompanied a general decline in civic participation, such as church attendance, membership in professional, fraternal, and student societies, youth groups, and parent-teacher associations.
    • Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) won the popular vote in 28 states and the District of Columbia (denoted in blue) to capture 365 electoral votes.
    • Senator John McCain (R-AZ) won the popular vote in 22 states (denoted in red) to capture 173 electoral votes.
    • Nebraska split its electoral vote when Senator Obama won the electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd congressional district; the state's other four electoral votes went to Senator McCain.
  • Low Voter Turnout

    • There are difficulties in measuring both the numerator, the number of voters who cast votes, and the denominator, the number of voters eligible to vote.
    • Furthermore, voters who do cast ballots may abstain, deliberately voting for nobody, or they may spoil their votes, either accidentally or as an act of protest.
    • The voting age population (VAP) refers to the set of individuals that have reached the minimum voting age for a particular geography or political unit.
    • In estimating voter turnout the voting age population for a political unit is often used as the denominator for the number of individuals eligible to vote in a given election; this method has been shown to lose inaccuracy when a larger percentage of the VAP is ineligible to vote.
    • The decline in voting has also accompanied a general decline in civic participation, such as church attendance, membership in professional, fraternal, and student societies, youth groups, and parent-teacher associations.
  • Forming Political Values

    • The agents a child surrounds him/herself with during childhood are crucial to the child's development of future voting behaviors.
    • Peers – Limited in effect because of self-selection Peer group in youth affects mostly "lifestyle issues"
  • The Executive Branch

    • In that capacity, the Vice President is allowed to vote in the Senate, but only when necessary to break a tie vote.
    • Barack Obama's presidential campaigns were successful partly as a result of youth participation.
  • Winning an Election: Majority, Plurality, and Proportional Representation

    • Common voting systems are majority rule, proportional representation, or plurality voting with a number of criteria for the winner.
    • A voting system contains rules for valid voting, and how votes are counted and aggregated to yield a final result.
    • Common voting systems are majority rule, proportional representation, or plurality voting with a number of variations and methods such as first-past-the-post or preferential voting.
    • The plurality voting system is a single-winner voting system often used to elect executive officers or to elect members of a legislative assembly that is based on single-member constituencies .
    • Compare and contrast the voting systems of majority rule, proportional representation and plurality voting
  • Women vs. Men

    • In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution gave women the right to vote and, today, women vote at similar rates to men.
    • There are a variety of theories that help to explain who votes.
    • Other approaches examine the question of the rationality of voting: does voting serve the self-interest of any given individual, and what are the interests or issues that might change someone's voting patterns?
    • In spite of this long-term institutional barrier to voting, women today vote at similar rates to men.
    • Women also do not generally vote as a bloc, and instead tend to be as diverse in their voting patterns as men.
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