Turnout by Age
Charles Franklin has a series of graphs on age and turnout of which my favorite is this one, plotting the over or under representation of different age cohorts in the electorate relative to their share of the population. As you can see, the under-35 and the over-80 demographics are underrepresented in the population of actual voters. You can also see that there was a substantial change between 2000 (the blue line) and 2004 (the red line) in terms of turning out the youngest slice of voters. Because the Kerry campaign talked a lot about a youth surge driving them to victory and then they lost the election, there’s sometimes a tendency to dismiss the idea that their youth turnout efforts worked.
As you can see here, though, they worked just fine. Kerry both captured a large share of younger voters and got them to decrease the extent to which they’re underrepresented even in the context of a year when turnout rates increased across the board.
19 Responses to “Turnout by Age”
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August 12th, 2008 at 10:27 am
By the way, this is one of the reasons McCain is within shouting distance in the polls–any likely voter model that factors in prior voting behavior is screening out more younger voters, which benefits McCain’s numbers.
Which is fine if you assume those distributions won’t change much this time. But if they do, then the likely voter models could be significantly off this time.
August 12th, 2008 at 10:28 am
You’re misreading the graph or I am. It looks like the youth vote was less underrepresented (closer to or above the 1.0 line) in 2000 (the blue line) than in 2004 (the red line).
August 12th, 2008 at 10:38 am
SomeCallMeTim,
I guess it depends on what you consider the “youth vote”. The part where the red line is above the blue line is between the ages of 18 and somewhere around 30, and then the blue line is above the red line after that.
August 12th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Fair point. That must have been what he was talking about. The slopes of the lines at that end seem strange to me, too. Did youth culture suddenly get revived in ‘04?
August 12th, 2008 at 11:01 am
As you can see, the under-35 and the over-80 demographics are underrepresented in the population of actual voters.
How do you get that for the over-eighties? Even the over-eighty-fives vote proportionately to their numbers, their increasing infirmity notwithstanding, and the 80-84 bloc votes at the same rate as the 60-year-olds. It’s good to see the influx of younger voters in 2004, and one hopes that will continue, but it continues to be likely that we aging boomers will continue to dominate the electorate
August 12th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Keep in mind that because the plots show relative representation of each demographic, their integrals must both be the same.
The 18-30 demographic so a dramatic increase in their representation which necessitates a corresponding decrease in the levels of other demographics. It should not therefore be assumed that 30-40 year olds were therefore less likely to vote in 2004 than in 2000. In fact, as Matt points out, turnout was up in virtualy every demographic.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:28 am
That’s a nice point, too, WS. Thanks.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:51 am
When I worked for the Congress, writing legislation for an excellent boss, lo these thirty years ago, somebody — a PoliSci prof, actually — once asked me why we wrote so ma y stupid laws.
I said “Well, people over 65 are ten percent of the population, but 18% of the vote.”
Us over-65’s are now a higher percentage of the population, but it looks like our relative voting power is about the same now as then.
And yes, I think that DTM, above, has it right. This voting tendency alone is probably the single factor which makes the ridiculous John McCain look even faintly viable. Alterkackers like a candidate who look slightly dazed but insistent.
Rock the vote!
August 12th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I’m not firmly in the “it’s all about demographics” camp, but I think if we had the same graph for 2008 today, we would know the results of the upcoming election.
Meaning that all this crap about celebrity and tire gauges is meaningless, and get out the vote is the whole game.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I bet there is a strong correlation to employment in this graph. Many younger people have crap hourly jobs that cost them money to vote, if they are even allowed to take the time off. (Or wait out the long lines after work.) I bet this is also a minority issue. The highest voting demographic are the youngest retireds. The truly elderly probably vote in similar numbers if able, but a significant percentage are incapacitated.
Bottom line, I think the youth vote jumps with a weekend election process.
August 12th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Not to mention Election Day Registration. Young people move more often, so they have to re-register each time, and many fail to do so by whatever arbitrary date their state sets for registration in advance of the election.
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