Increased Voter Outreach Caused National Youth Voter Surge

I’ve spent the last few days pouring over Election Day returns and have been marveling at the astounding youth turnout numbers. The increase in youth voter turnout this week was four times the rate of the general population’s increase (4 percentage points for youth, 1 percentage point overall). On top of that, an analysis of 36 student-dense precincts where the nonpartisan Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project---which worked on 80 campuses--- conducted voter registration and Get Out the Vote work found that the rate of turnout in those precincts was six times that of young adults overall. In other words, youth voter turnout surged this week, and at college campuses where our amazing network of student leaders and professional organizers were active, the turnout increase was even higher. So what happened, and what lessons can we learn from all of this?

The goal of the nonpartisan Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project is to boost youth participation in the political process. We’re convinced that if we boost participation rates enough, candidates will begin focusing their campaign resources on young people (which they largely ignore now), which will in turn drive youth turnout upward as young people begin to perceive politics and politicians to be relevant and responsive to their concerns. Our strategy is to rely largely on the same basics as political campaigns: peer-to-peer voter registration drives followed up with face-to-face and over the phone Get Out the Vote efforts. This strategy has been validated in recent years thanks to the excellent research of social scientists such as Donald Green at Yale University, who has found that personalized, peer-to-peer phone and face-to-face voter reminders before an election increase voter turnout by between 5 and 10 percentage points.

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