Young Voters: 'Force To Be Reckoned With'

Youth voters put their rep on the line, say they will turn out this time.

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The rate of voter registration is nearly perfect, access to absentee ballots has been easier than expected and about three-fourths of young voters feel their voice matters in this year's presidential election.

That's according to an informal survey conducted earlier this month by American University that examined indicators of voter activity among college students, who reported a high likelihood of voting on Nov. 4.

"I truly believe that this election might be able to wash away that bad reputation that we have," said Kristian Hoysradt, an American University senior from Gloucester, Mass. "I think we're overcoming that apathetic bump that has always hindered people from getting out there to vote."

"Young people are a force to be reckoned with," added Jane Hall, an AU associate professor whose Politics and the Media course conducted the survey. "We've predicted that they were going to be more and more involved ... If this race turns out to be tight, we'll be looking at how much young voters were a force."

Coverage of this year's presidential race between Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has been infused with youth energy.

More than 6.5 million people younger than 30 participated in primaries and caucuses this presidential election season, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement at the University of Maryland. That was a "dramatic" increase from turnout in 2000, the last comparable election cycle.

And similar results were evident in AU's survey. Nearly 96 percent of those surveyed are registered to vote, and almost that many say they will vote on Nov. 4. About 95 percent of those surveyed rated get-out-the-vote efforts as either "very" or "somewhat" effective.

"Our generation is more democratic, and they care more," said AU senior Christina Friedberg, who helped compile the results from the survey. "We've really grown up with President Bush, and we're looking to get away from that."

About 63 percent said they were planning on voting via absentee ballot. In written answers, survey respondents described few problems in accessing absentee ballots, citing abundant information on the Internet, helpful volunteers and even willing parents as factors that made obtaining an absentee ballot relatively simple.

Politics and the Media

Hoysradt said he had heard several anecdotes about the difficulty of accessing absentee ballots, so the survey results indicating otherwise surprised him.

"I think we were more looking for people to say, 'I had a hard time; things need to be changed,' " added Friedberg, a 22-year-old from Pittsburgh.

Less than half –- 43.5 percent –- said they had been contacted by a campaign. Of those, slightly more than a third said they had been contacted by campaigns of both Obama and McCain, but a majority –- 52.3 percent –- had been sought out solely by Obama.

Meanwhile, 41.5 percent of students surveyed, which included students from AU, the University of Notre Dame, Wake Forest University and the University of Utah, reported not being as enthusiastic about the elections as they were a half-year ago.

Hoysradt said enthusiasm may have peaked during the tight race between Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ended and waned around the time that campaigns from both McCain and Obama flooded the airwaves and the Internet with negative advertisements.

"I think it's an oversaturation," he said. "When the campaign's been going on for now, two years, you can only stay excited for so long."

Survey leaders acknowledged that their interview methods aren't perfect. Everyone they contacted, which included nearly 150 young adults from 23 states, was enrolled in college –- not indicative of the larger demographic.

Nationwide, about 78 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds said they were registered to vote, according to a Gallup poll released Oct. 22.

But despite the unscientific methodology, Hall said the influence that the youth will have on Nov. 4 is clear.

"If you think your vote matters, you're more likely to turn out," Hall said. "From the polling I've seen, young people think this is an important election, and they think their vote matters."