One of the trending explanations on the liberal blogs today is that the reason Democrats lost bigtime last night is because young voters (who generally vote for Democrats more than Republicans) didn’t turn out to vote. That’s a logical enough explanation. Consider this graph at Jonathan Cohn’s blog:

But the truth is, historically, young voters don’t turnout to vote on midterms. The trend has been decreasing in recent years too, according to The Center for Information & Research On Civic Learning and Engagement. Read here. As you can see, in 2006 there was a slight uptick in youth voter turnout but in the last twenty years people my age increasingly haven’t been that interested or thought it was necessary to vote in midterms. By contrast, in presidential elections, way more young voters turn out. According to CIRCLE, since 1972 youth voter turnout has floated around between the low 40 and upper 50 percent. In the midterms the average is in the 20 percent range.

–Daniel Strauss

1 Comment

• Dan says:

  November 3, 2010 at 1:44 pm

  You need a second parenthesis in the first sentence

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