With the wave of voting madness hitting the University of Wisconsin student body over the past few months, many UW students may believe young voter turnout was equally strong nationwide.
But not so, shows a survey by the Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International of New York City for the National Election Pool.
According to the survey, 18 to 29-year-olds made up 17 percent of nationwide voters this election. Charles Franklin, UW professor of political science, is analyzing the student turnout this week. He said this is the same percentage of young voters that headed to the polls for the 2000 presidential election.
Nationwide, total voter turnout was on the rise, with 60 percent of U.S. citizens voting as compared to 55 percent in 2000, according to the CNN website and the U.S. Census Bureau. So while the percentage of young voters may not have changed, their numbers increased this election.
“From one perspective, the relative proportion of the electoral vote doesn’t look like it changed at all,” Franklin said. “On the other hand … the percentage is the same but the number is greater. But it certainly doesn’t look like there was a huge change.”
In Wisconsin, Franklin said young voters made up 20 percent of the state’s voters, up one relative percentage point from the previous presidential election. He compared these numbers to elections in the ’80s and ’90s. In 1988, 27 percent of young Wisconsin voters cast ballots. In 1992, the number was down to 23 percent. By 1996, young voters accounted for only 18 percent of the Wisconsin vote.
“Turnout was up only a small bit in Wisconsin and dead even in the country as a whole [as a percentage],” Franklin said.
Students nationwide favored Sen. Kerry by 9 percentage points, according to the New York Times, with 54 percent casting their ballots to the Democrat and 45 percent to President Bush.
Franklin said he was not surprised a majority of students favored Kerry and noted in Wisconsin the margin was even greater, with 57 percent of young voters in favor of Kerry and 41 percent supporting Bush.
“There’s a seeming perception that the student vote is always overwhelmingly Democratic,” Franklin said. “That’s just not true. It’s a heterogeneous group. But typically, more students vote Democratic than Republican.”
In Madison, however, the breakdown was lopsided. The city saw an 80 percent voter turnout with 138,452 ballots cast — and nearly 75 percent of voters favored Kerry. According to a city release, in 2000 only 118,000 Madison voters made it to the polls.
“From what we’ve seen, the turnout in Madison and in Wisconsin was phenomenal,” said Bria Morgan, volunteer coordinator for the New Voter Alliance, adding many students were voting for the first time. “Unfortunately, it appears not to have been the same around the country.”
She attributed some of Madison’s large turnout to the fact Wisconsin is a swing state, but also applauded organizations that worked hard to register young voters in the Badger State.
“It’s a very concentrated effort in Madison and Milwaukee. It was groups actively recruiting and educating,” she said.
While Morgan said she was not familiar with “what all the other swing states were doing,” she imagined their efforts were similar. She added, however, Ohio was unsuccessful at mobilizing the student vote.
“Young people traditionally vote more progressively,” she said, noting the student vote in Ohio could have made a big difference in the outcome of the election.
