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Thursday, October 21, 2004

Bush wins the Youth vote

Unfortunately these youth are too young to vote.

American teens have spoken, and they want George W. Bush for president. Nearly 1.4 million teens voted in the nation's largest mock election, and the Republican incumbent wound up with 393 electoral votes and 55 percent of the total votes cast. Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry received 145 electoral votes, far short of the 270 electoral votes needed to win a presidential election. Kerry received 40 percent of the total votes, while five percent of teens selected the third-party option, though no third-party presidential hopefuls managed to pick up any electoral votes. In an exit poll taken after making their pick for president, teens weighed in on the issues most important to them. A majority of respondents-- 44 percent-- said that the war in Iraq was the most important issue facing the candidates today. The economy was the first priority in the minds of 22 percent of teens, followed by education (14 percent), national security (12 percent) and health care (8 percent).
Update: Here is another poll, possibly related.

5 Comments:

Blogger Andrew said...

You wouldn't believe how quickly I worked to rationalize this away. And the result?

Teens don't follow politics.

It's good to teach them the practical side of civics through demostrations like this, but they still don't follow politics well enough for this to mean much. You'd think that was obvious, but I saw somebody using this to fortell the rise of a New Young Right...

I'm actually kind of curious how often these teen voting simulations go to a challenger when they're running against an incumbant. My guess is that it doesn't happen very often.

10/21/2004 07:29:00 PM  
Blogger Dave Justus said...

I'll buy the idea that teens don't follow politics, but I don't think I buy the idea that the follow politics less than the average voter.

There could be other factors that cause teens in this mock election to scew more Republican than Democrat. Perhaps sub-urban, affluent districts (traditional republican strongholds) were more likely to participate. Perhaps the individual students self-select to be part of this exercise and for some reason the self-selection favors Republican teens over Democratic ones.

Or, perhaps teens have gotten the idea that Democrats like Andrew think they are ignorant and have therefore turned away from the Democratic party.

I think though that this 'survey' is in line with other information I have seen about teens and young adults, and it represents a fairly recent and signifigant shift. Of course teens can't vote at all, and young voters don't vote very often. This used to be a problem for the Democrats but it has become a problem for the Republicans instead.

10/21/2004 11:31:00 PM  
Blogger Brian said...

You may be on to something here, Dave. Democrats, like it or not, have cast themselves as the "we're so much smarter than you" party. Their campaigns, and in particular John Kerry's presidential campaign, reflect this from top to bottom. Being not so far removed from our teen years, some of us remember that there is nothing a teenager hates more than condescension from an adult. I think this goes a long way toward explaining the freefall in teens' (and young adults', too) support for Dems.

10/22/2004 08:17:00 AM  
Blogger Man of Issachar said...

i lean toward the side that says kids are always going to disagree with their parents.

So if most of their parents lean left, they might lean right.

10/22/2004 12:27:00 PM  
Blogger Dave Justus said...

Well cube, your hypothesis doesn't fit the data. If you look at the state by state results you will see the solid red and solid blue states pretty much go the same way whether in the national polls or in this youth vote data. The main difference is that pretty much all the swing states wind up going for Bush. This seems to reflect a generational shift toward the young being more Republican. Of course, without detailed knowledge of the sampling methods used you cannot make too much of a conclusion here.

10/22/2004 01:17:00 PM  

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