Daniel Simmons, Weber State University
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Too often young citizens (18-29) are ignored or discarded as an unimportant constituency by politicians due to the fact that youth do not vote in a consistent or significant manner. However, when the youth do turnout at the polls, their impact can be significant and can change the dynamics of political campaigning very quickly, as we saw recently with the success of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.
I propose that traditional beliefs about the main cause for youth voter turnout, namely that youth only vote in elections that are exciting and competitive, are flawed. I believe the most significant factor for youth voter turnout is the social connectivity of the youth voter; the more socially connected youth voters are within their community, the higher the turnout on Election Day. Social connectivity will be defined as the youth voter’s rate of religious attendance, marital status, and employment status, all as self-reported in the ANES survey administered during the 2012 presidential election. As the 18-29 age group is perhaps the most dynamic group of voters, I will analyze the results into smaller groups (18-20, 21-24, 25-29) to demonstrate that social connectivity fluctuates by age, with youth reaching their height of social connectivity in the 21-24 age group. These youth voters would be whom candidates would want to target in an election, as they are more likely to turn out.
Politicians determine their Get Out The Vote (GOTV) efforts based on expected youth turnout. If the research proves accurate, these efforts will need to be adapted to monitoring social connectivity rather than previous voting trends in order to have a more effective GOTV campaign. Additionally, this will add further evidence to the belief that youth are significantly engaged in politics and within their communities, despite historically low voter turnout.