Young Voter Turnout Up in 2008

Young voter turnout across the country rose for the third time in as many presidential election cycles, according to a new analysis by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). CIRCLE's analysis of raw turnout data found that the number of voters under 30 who showed up at the polls in 2008 increased by approximately 11 percent, while the number of older voters who cast a ballot increased by only 3 percent.

The Campaign

Since our inception 25 years ago, the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project has played a leading role in mobilizing young voters; highlighting their importance; developing and refining the techniques and technology used to reach them; and ensuring their right to cast a ballot once they appear at the polls.

In 2008, we expanded these efforts.

Our What’s Your Plan? Campaign helped inject young people and issues important to them in the spotlight early in the campaign season – more than 500 student volunteers in 28 states appeared at fundraisers, town hall meetings and stump speeches on the primary campaign trail or submitted a photo petition to ask the candidates their plans on key youth issues such as global warming; healthcare; financial security; and college affordability.  Ultimately, these volunteers talked directly with the presidential candidates 106 times, helping to impress upon the campaigns the importance of paying attention to young voters this election cycle.

Our new campus young voter mobilization model integrated a host of tech tools – such as texting and Facebook – with tried and true brick and mortar grassroots organizing techniques.  The effort thus reached young voters submerged in an increasingly wired world and also students unlikely to register due solely to online outreach.  

Our extensive on the ground young voter mobilization efforts on one hundred campuses in twenty states helped to register 118,000 young voters and established 440,000 personal voting reminders in the days before the election.

To ensure the rights of young people to vote once they arrived at the polls, our election protection program conducted aggressive outreach to local registrars to preempt Election Day problems. On November 4th , we placed a network of poll-watchers at student precincts to identify and remove student voting barriers.

From waylaying candidates in Iowa to ask their plans on global warming to texting tens of thousands of students ‘get out the vote’ reminders to monitoring polls for elections violations, the thousands of student leaders and professional organizers trained by the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project played a key role in this election to ‘make politicians pay attention to us.’

We are happy to report that six months of hard work culminated on Super Tuesday with a large increase in youth voters in California! From initial numbers it looks like the youth turnout rate increased from 13% in 2000 to 17% in 2008 with approximately 852,459 California youth voting ,  up from 574,807 in 2000 (an almost 50% increase). Obviously we still have a lot more youth to get into the political process but we wanted to take a moment and celebrate our work since the summer. 

Reinvigorating Democracy

CALPIRG and the Student PIRGs started the New Voters Project over 4 years ago as a non-partisan effort to register young people to vote and get them to the polls on Election Day. The health of our democracy depends on civic participation and for too long young people haven’t been full participants. In addition, the only way to get politicians to pay attention to young people and their issues is to prove that young people are a viable constituency that can be mobilized. Since 2003, our New Voters Project has helped to register 600,000 young people to vote and made 650,000 GOTV contacts.

What’s Your Plan? 

Something big has been happening in our democracy since 2004 – young people are voting. We know that when politicians talk to young people, they’ll vote even more. As Presidential candidates traveled the country last summer and fall we decided not to wait for the candidates to come to us, we decided to launch our What’s Your Plan? campaign and go to them and ask them what their plans were for issues that matter to young people like college affordability, global warming and health care. The more times young people showed up to town hall meetings and pancake breakfasts and asked the candidates “What’s Your Plan?”, the more likely they would talk directly to young people. The campaign accomplished a lot. 520 student volunteers attended 217 candidate events with What’s Your Plan? t-shirts, signs and leaflets and had 106 face-to-face conversations with the presidential candidates. In addition we generated over 500 media hits from coverage of events as well as letters to the editor and opinion editorials. Check out our Photo Gallery. Here are a few highlights:

Super Tuesday – Get Out the Vote

In the days leading up to Super Tuesday, CALPIRG students and staff were out in force helping to register and mobilizing students to the polls. Each of our CALPIRG chapters worked within the on - campus vote coalitions made up of student government and other student groups to help register thousands of students to vote. We were directly responsible for helping to register over 4700 students to vote, with UC Davis and USC each helping to register over 1000 students on their campuses. In the days leading up to the election, we continued to work with campus coalitions to contact voters by running massive phone banks, asking people at tables to pledge to vote, signing up Vote Captains who would be in charge of reminding 5-10 of their friends to vote, making class announcements and setting up large, fun, visible events on campus to give folks that last personal reminder to vote.  Ultimately we contacted more than 7,000 students and urged them to vote. Our efforts helped propel a statewide surge in the youth vote of almost 50% and generated local, state and national media coverage. Here are some pics and highlights….

“Tailgate the Debate”

To put young voters in the spotlight, students from ten Southern California campuses organized a ‘Tailgate the Debate’ event in front of the Kodak Theatre outside the Los Angeles Debates on January 31st. The event featured a life-sized plywood truck, 'Vote Goat' mascot, food and 40 students tailgating in bright red 'I Vote' shirts. Attracting considerable media attention, students were interviewed by more than 30 outlets outside the Kodak Theater and appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, on Current TV (Al Gore’s emmy-award winning T.V. station) and in a CNN story about the youth vote!  This was also the first time students from our UC and USC chapters worked with students from our project on the Los Angeles Community College District on a large, joint event.

The Gorilla and the Banana

This costume duo chased each other around the UC Davis campus wearing bright red ‘I Vote’ shirts and helping to register voters. After their mention on an interview on NPR’s Day to Day, UC Davis’ Gorilla/Banana duo made appearances on Sacramento’s Channel 10, Channel 11, San Francisco’s NBC affiliate, Capitol Public Radio and in the Chronicle of Higher Education.     

Other CALPIRG New Voters Project highlights…

• The work of Diego Janacua, lead student with CALPIRG at Los Angeles City College, was featured on a CBS Evening News story about the youth vote.
• Our work to help register as many students as possible on the California voter registration deadline day also appeared on Salon.com, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Orange County Register, Contra Costa Times, Daily Trojan, UCSD Guardian, Daily Californian, and California Aggie. 
• During a Super Tuesday CNN Newsroom discussion about the youth vote, CNN Newsroom posted the New Voters Project website as a resource for young voters. 
• Erin Steva, campus organizer at UC San Diego, was featured in a San Diego KPBS story about Super Tuesday efforts to get out the vote. Pictures of CALPIRG 's  February 5th GOTV were also selected by CNN and posted on its ‘iReports’ photo gallery’;
• On the eve of the election, the Student PIRGs partnered with Credo Mobile (the new name of Working Assetts), and the One Campaign to send 20,000 text message reminders to young voters across the country. Most of the names provided by the Student PIRGs came from California. Our text messaging efforts were reported on by Forbes.com; FoxBusiness.com; the Dallas Morning News and the Chronicle of Higher Education.