Research Says . . . Early Voting is for Old Folks

There was a lot of interest and activism around early voting this year - including among youth organizers. Today, Democracy Corps released a study analyzing the composition of the early voting electorate, which comprised 1/3 of all ballots cast in 2008:

Thanks to recent reforms to state voting laws, a high level of voter interest in the presidential election, and concerted campaign efforts, early voting took on new and greater prominence in 2008. Current estimates suggest that nearly one third of ballots were cast early in 2008, up from approximately 23 percent in 2004. The early vote had a distinct impact on the race. It shaped campaign strategy and tactics, allowed the candidates (especially Barack Obama) to lock in a sizable portion of their strong support, and left John McCain facing a significant deficit to make up on Election Day.

What they found, was that early voting was exercised disproportionately by women and African Americans, Obama voters more than McCain voters, and, most relevant to us, older voters instead of younger voters:

Traditionally, age has been strongly correlated with absentee voting, as older voters were more likely to qualify for one of the excuses required to vote early. Within the states that still require an excuse, older voters continue to make up a very large share of the early vote: in the Democracy Corps data, 79 percent of early voters in these states were age 50 or older and 46 percent were seniors (age 65 and over).

But as we noted earlier, the overwhelming majority of the early vote now comes from no-excuse states. The early vote in those states still skews older than the overall electorate, but much less dramatically than in the excuse-required states: 64 percent in this data set were over 50 and 32 percent were seniors. Because so much of the early vote comes from no excuse states, the age distribution for the early vote overall tracks these numbers closely. The following chart compares the age breakdowns of early and non-early voters.

They also provide a graph, that is a little unclear. As far as I can tell, the gray bars indicate both election-day voters and non-voters. That's why the numbers add up to more than 100%.

This isn't definitive, but it definitely looks to me like a case for youth groups focusing their voting reform efforts on Automatic Universal Registration and Election Day Registration rather than an expansion of early voting laws.