You’ve heard the big headlines about Tuesday’s election, one victory you might not have heard yet is that young people played an important role in some critical races around the country.
As you know, Rock the Vote was on the ground this year in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Colorado. In youth-dense precincts where we aggressively targeted young voters, we proved that building a relationship with this generation results in an expanded electorate. For example, in Pennsylvania, we saw a 25% increase in votes cast from 2006 totals in the nine most youth dense precincts in Philadelphia, where we worked to register and connect with young voters. In North Carolina near the Duke campus, we doubled turnout figures from 2006. If you’re interested, see our precinct totals here.
As turnout figures continue to be announced, we’re also out there telling the story of the 2010 youth vote and putting it in context. Experts have released data that indicates turnout was comparable with the 2006 midterm election, citing exit poll data at 20% turnout for 18-29 year olds. We found that Republicans won all age demographics this cycle except the youth vote, and that Democrats could have had substantially higher turnout if they’d stuck more closely to 2008′s winning playbook. Read Rock the Vote President Heather Smith’s op-ed in The Hill to learn more about what the results mean for young people going forward.
We want to thank you for all your support during this critical election cycle, and we’ll be in touch soon. Until then, enjoy these pictures and video of people voting fearlessly on Tuesday.
