It’s a question my parents, grandparents and teachers have been asking me for years. Why don’t young people vote?
And then the Iowa caucuses arrived. Record turnout of young people delivered the state to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and suddenly, the question from my elders changed.
“Why Obama?” they asked. Is it his age? Is it his race? Is it the way he talks and the speeches he gives?
No, I say. None of the above. The hype about youth turnout is just that: hype.
It wasn’t just young people who gave Obama his first primary victory — it was college-educated voters young and old.
Youth voting data from the University of Maryland shows that education level is the single largest factor separating voters and non-voters 18 to 24 years old. And despite the recent upward trend in youth voting since 2004, college-educated young people continue to dominate voter turnout by that age group.
According to the U.S. Census, there were 14.1 million undergraduates enrolled in American colleges in 2005, up from 12.4 million in 2000. And enrollment is even higher today.
In 2004, college-educated youth outvoted their non-college-educated peers 59 percent to 34 percent. That trend continued last month on Super Tuesday, when one quarter of college-educated youth voters cast a ballot, compared to one in 14 non-college-educated youth.
Young people today, high school grads and PhDs alike, will inherit a series of problems created or left unsolved by the generations that came before us — the war in Iraq, global warming, a middle class drowning in debt while working harder but making less — yet education continues to divide voters and non-voters in this age group.
So while the major networks and newspapers across the country have been touting the youth vote as a new, potentially powerful base for younger, inspirational candidates like Obama, I don’t believe anything has changed. Educating people creates more politically active citizens, a fact we have all known for years.
>> a slightly condensed version of this was published in the Insight section of the San Francisco Chronicle.
