Curtis Gans: Youth Helped Propel Obama Victory

Regular readers know that Curtis Gans is both a highly respected expert on voter turnout, and something of a crank when it comes to the youth vote. This week, Gans released his report on 2008 voter turnout, and, given his history, I was pleasantly surprised to see him giving young voters some props in contributing to Obama's win.

An analysis of exit polls by Peter Levine and his colleagues at Tufts University, showed that youth turnout (18- 24) increased by one percentage point over 2004 and that both voting and activism was largely by the college educated and resident. This was the same group which, with strong anti-Bush and anti-Iraq war views, participated at a high rate in 2004 and drove overall youth turnout to within three percentage points of the post-18-20 enfranchisement high of 49.6 percent of eligibles voting in 1972. It is likely that the 2004 gain will mean that youth turnout was much closer to the 1972 high in reported turnout when the Census Bureau survey on reported voting is released.

But the more important contribution of the college-educated young was in providing the sinew for Obama’s extensive grassroots organization which was, in part, responsible for the large increase in Democratic turnout.

Nevertheless, something would be horribly amiss if Gans and I didn't disagree at least a little bit. And I can't agree with what he says here (emphasis mine):

This election and the election of 2004 provided a lesson about mobilization. In the 2004 election there was a large gap in President Bush’s favor with respect to positive feelings about the candidates. Most Republicans were voting affirmatively for Bush, while the primary motivation for nearly a majority of Democratic voters was not pro-Kerry, but anti-Bush. The situation was precisely the opposite in 2008, with substantially more Democratic voters expressing affirmative views about Obama than Republican voters about McCain.

In 2004 both parties had strong voter identification and get-out-the-vote efforts, but the GOP was able to draw substantially more voters to vote early and on Election Day. The opposite was true in 2008.

Which suggests that mobilization efforts—no matter how sophisticated they are and how comprehensive their reach—are as successful as the ground they till in terms of affirmative voter sentiment.

Maybe for the overall electorate that is true. After all, older voters are fairly set in their partisanship and voting habits. They need to be persuaded to change either - an expensive and difficult thing to accomplish. But with regards to the youth vote, I'm not sure that Gans's logic holds up. That' important because these paragraphs immediately follow the ones where he lauds the contributions of young voters, leaving the impression that youth turnout and mobilization is all about the candidate's popularity.

But as Gans himself knows, youth turnout increased substantially in 2004, despite the lack of "affirmative voter sentiment." I'll reiterate the message of my favorite political website in 2004, which I find to be a good summary of young people's attitudes during that campaign: "John Kerry is a douchebag but I'm voting for him anyway." In the face of that mantra, Gans' argument has no explanation for higher youth turnout, and he quite skillfully words his report so as to avoid the conversation. That's sort of his M.O.

The real lessons of 2004 and 2008 are that young voters will participate if you ask them to. And unlike older voters, their partisanship and voting habits are malleable. They don't need to be persuaded, they just need to be engaged and contacted. In 2004, independent organizations made that ask and youth turnout rose substantially. In 2008, both independent organizations and the Obama campaign made that ask, which was then echoed throughout our media. The result? Youth turnout reached the second highest level recorded since 18 - 20 year-olds received the right to vote.

It's also worth noting that Gans is defining youth as 18 - 24 year olds, despite the fact that CIRLCE, which he quotes, and pretty much every single organization dedicated to engaging young voters defines them as 18 - 29.