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Young Voters in the 2008 Presidential Election
By CIRCLE Staff November 24, 2008Updated December 19, 2008
An estimated 23 million young Americans under the age of 30 voted in the 2008 presidentialelection, an increase of 3.4 million compared with 2004. CIRCLE estimates that youth voter turnoutrose to between 52 and 53 percent, an increase of four to five percentage points over CIRCLE’sestimate based on the 2004 exit polls. The 2004 election was a strong one for youth turnout,reversing a long history of decline. If we compare 2008 with 2000, the increase in youth turnout isat least 11 percentage points.
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Notes: In 2008, youth turnout was estimated based on the popular count projection by Curtis Gans. Seeendnote #5 for description of estimation methods.
 
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Educational Gap Remains
Continuing the trend observed in the past elections, young people with no college experience wereunderrepresented in this election.
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Although 57% of U.S. citizens between ages of 18 and 29 haveever attended college, 70% of the young voters had gone to college, meaning that college-educated youth were much more likely to vote (Figure 2). Furthermore, people with less than ahigh school diploma represented only six percent of the young voters, compared to 14% in thegeneral population. Young people with no high school diplomas showed lower trust in the electoralprocess (14% “not at all” confident that votes would be counted accurately compared to 1-2% foryouths with high school diploma or higher), showed higher levels of support for health-carecoverage than other groups (18% compared to 9% overall), were more racially diverse and morelikely to be African American (27%) or Latino (22%), while less likely to be white (47%). Finally,young voters with no high school diploma reported making up their mind about their vote relativelylate (46% in October or later) compared to other groups (30% overall).
Figure 2: Education Gap in Voting
14%29%38%16%3%6%24%38%24%8%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%Less than HS HS diploma Some College CollegeDegreePost Graduate
% of population% of voters
 
Source: 2008 National Election Pool, National Exit Poll
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Although youth with and without college experience differed in many ways, they had one importantthing in common: They showed overwhelming support for the Democratic candidate BarackObama (Figure 3). There was remarkably little difference in candidate preference between youngAmericans with different educational attainment, ranging from 63% (college graduates) to 68%(youth without high school diploma).
 
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Source: 2008 National Election Pool, National Exit Poll
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Young Voters Strongly Support Barack Obama and the Democratic Party
Barack Obama received his strongest support from the 18-to-29 year-old voting bloc; more thantwo-thirds of these voters cast their ballot for the Obama/Biden ticket. Senator McCain receivedabout a third of the youth votes. Moreover, young people were more likely to self-identify as a “Democrat” (45%) than an “Independent or Something Else” (29%) or a “Republican” (26%).
Figure 4: Voter Preference by Age
68%52%49%47%32%46%49%51%45%38%37%39%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%18-29 30-44 45-59 60+
Voted for ObamaVoted for McCainIdentify as Democrats
 
Source: 2008 National Election Pool, National Exit Poll
 
One of the most striking characteristics of this election was young people’s united support forBarack Obama, which seemed to cross racial and partisan lines. For example, just thirty-threepercent of young white voters self-identified as “Democrat,” yet 54% voted for the Democraticcandidate. Similar trends were seen with African-Americans and Latinos: a significant number of youth self-identified as Republicans yet voted for Barack Obama, the Democratic presidentialcandidate (see Figure 5).
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