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The Media Government Politics

Media Got It Wrong: Young Generation Did Vote 117

Posted by jamie from the whoops-they-did-it-again dept.
Newsweek has a small story on MSNBC: Not Slackers After All?. It seems the media jumped to conclusions when it said, right after the election, that 18-to-29 year olds didn't turn out in record numbers. In fact, the participation of every age group was up, including young voters, but the youth vote wasn't up any more than other age groups, so the percentage was about the same from the 2000 election. I guess everyone rocked the vote.
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Media Got It Wrong: Young Generation Did Vote More

Media Got It Wrong: Young Generation Did Vote

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  • Doesn't change the fundamental fact... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ianoo ( 711633 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @06:14AM (#10805962) Journal
    ... that young people are statistically less likely to vote than middle aged and older people, even if turnout compared to last time was up. There must be ways to get the MTV generation interested in politics, after all, it's rather important - but so far, attracting them seems to have eluded most of the Western World's democracies.
    • Free Britney Spears cd with every vote for Jeb Bush in 2008?

    • Re:Doesn't change the fundamental fact... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 13, 2004 @10:16AM (#10806450)
      It's a combination of poor candidates ("Yeah Bush sucks, but is Kerry any better?"), general apathy ("Does it really matter which one is president?"), and pessimism ("I live in a (red|blue) state, so my vote won't matter anyway").

      Reason #1 is a current favorite among the media. The story now is that the Democrats lost because they've managed to systematically alienate pretty much every voter group in the country.

      Reason #2 is my personal favorite, meaning the one which most worries me. Kerry was utterly unable to separate himself in terms of his policies from Bush on any important issue. His main arguments were about differences of rationale rather than differences of policy. Was going to war in Iraq wrong? No, but the way we did it was wrong. Was a huge budget deficit wrong? No, but the way we spent it was wrong. And so on. A President Kerry would've done all the same stupid shit Bush has done, and will doubtless continue to do. He'd just have given different reasons for it.

      As for reason #3, well, that applies to every age group. Not really any way around it in a country this big. It may affect younger voters more because our parents, as a generation, are not fans of this country. So we have less patriotism than past generations and feel it's less of a civic duty to vote. You know, if the government's just going to do its own shit regardless of what we say, what's the point to even having an opinion?

      Personally, I think the solution is not refusing to vote, but instead voting for someone who hasn't got a chance in hell of winning. 60% or so of our country voted. If the remaining 40% came out and threw away their votes like that, would it affect the outcome? Yeah, if we all voted for the same guy, but really what it would accomplish is sending a message. Not to the politicians, who are too thick to get any message that's not wrapped around a 2x4, but to the other voters: You don't have to settle!

      It's all a pipe dream, of course. We're locked into mediocre, functionally identical candidates for the rest of time, but it's a nice dream. And so I act as if I had any effect on that dream coming to pass, even though I don't.

      • Re:Doesn't change the fundamental fact... (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Reason #2 is my personal favorite, meaning the one which most worries me. Kerry was utterly unable to separate himself in terms of his policies from Bush on any important issue. His main arguments were about differences of rationale rather than differences of policy. Was going to war in Iraq wrong? No, but the way we did it was wrong. Was a huge budget deficit wrong? No, but the way we spent it was wrong. And so on. A President Kerry would've done all the same stupid shit Bush has done, and will doubtless

    • Old News. Michael Moore told the truth about youth voting a week ago, but nobody listened since it was Michael Moore.
      • Does he regret what he did now that he understands that he motivated more Republicans to vote than Democrats?
        • No. He's working on a sequel to F911. His films generally do much better when Republicans are in power. Why would he have any regrets? Democrats treat him like a rock star, and Republicans give him lots of free publicity by trying to shout him down. This election was the best possible outcome, as far as he's concerned.

          By the way, the main story is stupidly misleading. The media said all along that youth turn-out was up, but since all voter turn-out was up the youth vote was still proportionately ab

  • On the other hand (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @07:06AM (#10806049)
    Exit polls revealed that while the youngest age group still formed the same proportion of the voting population that it did in 2000, the next older group voted in a substantially lower proportion, and the oldest two groups voted in a somewhat higher proportion.

    Ultimately it's a matter of playing with numbers and interpreting the results in whatever way makes you feel good. In this case, the people involved in youth voter drives are spinning the numbers to say that their efforts actually did something, when really nobody can say one way or another what factors actually influenced the youth vote.

    • To get to the *whole* truth statistically speaking one needs to:
      A) deal with both percentages, and raw numbers,
      AND
      B) deal with *all* pertinent statistics (note the plural) rather than *a* statistic.

      An example of the former would be to not only determine what the mean of a population is, but also to determine the variance of the population. In other words to determine note only the central tendency, but the distribution as well.

      In the context of the 'youth' vote in the 2004, and 2000 Presidential Elections
    • But then the exit polls were off by tens of percentage points in some areas. Either their decades-old, predictable polling methods were vastly innacurate for some areas, or the result is screwy... either way, this is all complete speculation with no root in reality :)

  • The Media Outlets I Follow Reported Percentages (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Noksagt ( 69097 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @07:21AM (#10806080) Homepage
    and they all said the same thing as this article: more people voted across the board. Even though the number of youth voters increased, it is still an embarrasment! There was a huge push to get the youth to vote & no such push for older people (conspiracy theories regarding gay marriage ammendments aside). Yet obviously that push didn't do much!
    • So, what you are saying is that P. Diddy has his work cut out for him?
    • conspiracy theories regarding gay marriage ammendments aside


      i'm guessing that you don't care much the 'theory of evolution' either. conspiracies are only conspiracies if they are secret. open statements about courting evangelicals and organizing an amendment that has no hope of ratification to boost turnout isnt theory. it's fact.
      • OK. First of all: I was against the ammendments & didn't vote for Bush (though I'm not gay and am an independent who has voted for republicans & did vote for some in the last election).

        I haven't heard Rove or anyone else say that the ammendments were planned in order not to outlaw gay marriage, but to elect Bush. Please provide such evidence. I grant you that it is no secret that many for Bush were in favor of the ammendments, but correlation doesn't mean causation. And I've heard none try to c
        • I didn't vote for the amendment either. I'm not gay, but I don't think the Feds belong in the mariage business at all, so maybe my vote was illogical, but it didn't matter much.

          It seems here that although 85% voted to define marriage as a union of a man and a women, most are for civil unions, but that's not what was on the ballot.

          In fact, they only put the first line of each amendment on the ballot. That pissed me off so much, I didn't vote for any of them. The ole butterfly always had the whole thing
    • Actually, there was a large push to get out the older people vote, and it's no conspiracy. It just wasn't orchestrated (directly) by the RNC.

      However, if you went to church regularly before the election, church leaders were very much encouraging their congregations to get out and vote.

      • Actually, there was a large push to get out the older people vote, and it's no conspiracy. It just wasn't orchestrated (directly) by the RNC.

        However, if you went to church regularly before the election, church leaders were very much encouraging their congregations to get out and vote.

        Well, this didn't occur at my Church, but I am aware of this happening. But there was also a push for young people to get out and vote. If you went to a college campus, I'd imagine you would get encouragement to vote against

    • The answer is very simple.
      All thoses get out the youth vote did was sign up a bunch of people who had no interest in voting, so they did not show up to vote. Alot of the groups went around with pre-filled in cards, the applicate just had to sign the filled in form and they were done, or in some cases they got a prize(t-shirt,underwear,cheap item) for filling out the paperwork. Thoses types of people do not go and vote.

      Also the Republicans did focus on older people and others who were already registere

  • Rock the vote (Score:3, Funny)

    by isorox ( 205688 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @08:25AM (#10806196) Homepage Journal
    Rock the vote
    dont rock the vote baby
    Rock the vote
    dont tip the vote over
    rock the vote!

  • More Young must have Voted Republican (Score:5, Interesting)

    by redelm ( 54142 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @08:26AM (#10806197) Homepage
    ... in the privacy of the voting booths. Otherwise, Kerry'd've won.

    Anyone have a graph, %Kerry versus average reg.voter age by state? NY is old, yet went Kerry. TX is young, yet went Bush.

  • As a member of the Religious Right... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @09:40AM (#10806351) Homepage Journal
    This is intended to be 'interesting', nothing more.

    As a conservative Christian, I heard all the appeals from the Hollywood Left (Bruce Springsteen, Snoop Doggy Dog, MTV, et al) and thought, "Man, I'd better make sure to vote! The college kids are going to turn out and who knows what will happen!"

    Perhaps the Get Out the Vote campaign was more effective than they thought.

    • Re:As a member of the Religious Right... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Darth_Burrito ( 227272 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @10:59AM (#10806578)
      As a young columbus resident, I heard all the appeals from P-Diddy, Chris Rock, John Kerry, and everyone else at least once each every day ... on my phone ... at my door ... on my tv.

      I think we had 7 messages on our answering machine the day before elections and those are just the times we didn't answer the phone. We would see a canvaser a day at our door every day of the week leading up to the election. Sometimes there would be several in one a day.

      What was the effect of this? We developed a strong hatred for anyone invading the privacy of our home in order to tell us to go vote. We'd tell them everyday, yes, we're voting, we put up a frickin political sign in are yard... but still they would come back day after day after day. At the end of it all, my room mate was actually threatening not to vote if people didn't stop pestering us.

      It was harassment.
      • So did you vote?

        No, really. Did you?

        I think it's really important. I have to tell you that it's important. Vital to democracy.

        So did you vote?

        No, really. Did ....

      • And what makes it worse is they would knock on my door and then sit there and lie to my face.

        Hi, I'm Susie from a non-partisan organization trying to get out the vote. Blah blah blah. Here's a checklist to help you determine who to vote for. Gee, thanks susie, all these issues are so complex and I'm too young and naive to figure out anything on my own. The checklist would make Bush appear to be the prince of darkness while Kerry was some angel dedicated to the social well being of america.

        Next Su
        • Blockquoth the poster:

          The checklist would make Bush appear to be the prince of darkness while Kerry was some angel dedicated to the social well being of america.

          I agree. You'd never see the Republicans implying that Kerry is the spawn of Satan while Bush is chosen by God... They'd come right out and say it.
          • Hey, The American people obviously are tired of all the lies in politics, and any sort of straightforwardness is inately appealing. Hence the popularity(at the grassroots level) of McCain, Bradley, Keyes, etc. Many don't care what you believe anymore so much that you believe. Bradley IMO was as far from the center(to the left) as I am(to the right) but he seemed to have a core set of beliefs that drove him. Gore, not so much.

          • I agree. You'd never see the Republicans implying that Kerry is the spawn of Satan while Bush is chosen by God...

            We're talking about this one guy's experience. He's young and in a swing state, so odds are the Kerry supporters would be dogging him.

            Oh, and I think this election the Democrats took the cake on demonization [google.com].

      • Also mod up his followup post (to himself, yes, I know, but it's good too.)
      • should have put up a bush cheney sign in the yard... that'd stop the door to door canvasers anyway.

  • Can you imagine this horror? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If Kerry had won, P. Diddy may have gotten some credit. P. Fucking Diddy! Might have even shown up on the same stage as the President. As much as I wanted Dubya to lose, this would have been too much to stomach.
  • From the article above

    And throughout modern history, those aged 21 to 29 have typically been less likely to vote than older Americans. After a brief spike in 1992, turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds in the 2000 presidential election dropped more than 20 percentage points below the national average--46 percent to the other age groups' 72 percent.

    turnout among the under-30 set shot up 9 percent from 2000

    Since every age bracket voted in higher numbers than in 2000, the exit polls showed about equal yo

  • Thank God (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MarkPNeyer ( 729607 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @11:23AM (#10806684)

    Allow me to say "Thank god" - young people are idiots. I say this with certainty because I am one of them. Most of us have the attention span of gnats and would have been making votes based on stupid ideas - the draft? Give me a goddamn break, MTV. The whole 'Rock The Vote' charade was a thinly veiled attempt to get young people afraid they were going to be drafted if George W. Bush stayed in power. When I told people it was a democrat that introduced a draft bill into congress, it was democrats who voted for it, and that it was john kerry who called for mandatory service, they would go 'oh' and realize they'd been duped. If you want to get young people interested in the political process, telling them to 'vote or die' and filling their head with rediculous lies isn't the best way to do it.

    • Re:Thank God (Score:5, Informative)

      by An Onerous Coward ( 222037 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @12:49PM (#10807121) Homepage
      A few clarifications:

      There are two draft bills, not one.

      S.B. 89 has never gotten out of committee, so Democrats could never have voted for it.

      H.R 163 was defeated 402-2, so even if both "for" votes were cast by Democrats, that's about 1% of all the mules in the House. To say "it was Democrats who voted for it" is misleading.

      John Kerry's plan didn't call for mandatory military service. Instead, it provided incentives like college tuition. Republicans were quick to mischaracterize the term "national service", even though much of the plan was simply meant to increase volunteerism. Read more. [johnkerry.com]

    • Re:Thank God (Score:2, Informative)

      by goon america ( 536413 )
      The whole Bush campaign for the last two years has been a thinly veiled attempt to get people to think that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were the same person. And, it worked: most Bush voters thought that there was proof they were working together, and also thought that WMD was found in Iraq, and that the war was popular worldwide.

      Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had

      • Re:Thank God (Score:2, Interesting)

        by cold fjord ( 826450 )
        It drives me up a wall that these guys were able to win an election in part because they were able to successfully misinform people.

        I suspect that the only thing that makes the Kerry supporters look good is that the researchers are focusing on misperceptions that would be most likely held by Bush supporters. I don't think it would take much to reveal the Kerry voters to be similarly misinformed, and for practical purposes, the Bush voters to be much closer to the truth.

        For example, ask the average Kerry

        • Re:Thank God (Score:3, Insightful)

          by dave420 ( 699308 )
          he shoots... he misses!

          I accept that people on both sides will be wrong about certain things. That's because we're people. The main difference is, the President of the US and his team actively spread those lies to ensure their re-election. Any incorrect details believed by Kerry supporters weren't learned through Kerry or his campaign.

          Also, Saddam wasn't a massive supporter of international terrorism. Paying $1,000 to families of palestinian suicide bombers isn't a great deal compared to the $1bn give

        • Step one: for each of the misperceptions, come up with something sort of related that is strictly true. In each of these cases, you just laid out what the Bush administration laid out to mislead people into thinking the misperception.

          Most of the world opposed the war in terms of people. But, you can say that a large number of countries supported the war, it is merely an attempt to imply that much of the world supported the war in the general sense. But you had to rely on this very specific wording in order
    • Bush has lied to America so many times, there really isn't anyway to tell if there will be a draft or not. You sure can't go by what Bush said he would do. The next four years are going to be completely unrelated to his campaign. Big issue pre-November: Terrorism. Big issue post-November--privatizing Social Security. You wouldn't expect all those old retirees and baby boomers to vote for taking 2 trillion dollars out of the system, would you? In the 2006 congressional elections, we'll find out if the
    • The whole 'Rock The Vote' charade was a thinly veiled attempt to get young people afraid they were going to be drafted if George W. Bush stayed in power.

      Oh please, stop with the tinfoil hat assertions. As a former intern at Rock the Vote's offices, my experience at the office headquarters had been entirely bi-partisan. Our goal was straight and simple. Increase voter turnout among the nation's youth. Saying we had an insidious goal to oust Bush is absolutely ridiculous. Nice try, but no cigar.

  • How com every time I read... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @11:54AM (#10806820) Journal
    a msn*.* new article I deicde that a news source field in each /. story would be a good idea, and new source modding would be a great idea.

    Something like:

    if newsource contains [ MSN ] then [ -6 ] :-) in fairness, they are either reporting the truth, but selectively, or even worse, not reporting certain areas.

    This is why /. is good, many many news sources. And news.google.com of course.

  • Yeah, of course (Score:5, Insightful)

    by philthedrill ( 690129 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @12:10PM (#10806890)
    Of course, when they're giving the stats in relative percentages, the numbers don't tell the whole story. Yet people were quick to make a judgment call before working out all of the numbers.

    With that said, I would have liked to see an even higher turnout. I've read that the national turnout was roughly 60% according to this article [cnn.com].

    But part of that was because Wisconsin had high voter turnout (see here [madison.com]), which was 72% statewide and 80% in Dane County (where Madison is). I guess I should blame myself since the campaigns really focused on the swing states... I'm sure the youth turnout in the non-swing states wasn't nearly as high.

    This article [washingtonpost.com] says the same thing as this post, except it noted towards the end that most of the youth voters are in or have attended college. The non-college youth are the people that I'd like to see vote.

  • As it turns out... the Media... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dozix007 ( 690662 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @12:12PM (#10806904)
    As it turns out... the Media did say that numbers were up, but not percentage of the vote. I clearly recall hearing that election night. What the author of this article is hearing is the constant repetitive nature of 24hr news networks. You crazy Dems. are gonna have to live up to the fact that your party base would rather Stay at Home then vote if it ment them going through rain, or waiting in line.

    • the fact that your party base would rather Stay at Home then vote if it ment them going through rain, or waiting in line.

      I saw an interesting graph of line-length vs. "major party of precinct" vs. "party affiliation of election official"; it appeared that lines were significantly shorter if the precinct tended to vote for the party of the person in charge of the process. Of course, this doesn't have to mean anything ominous (it could, for example, have been due to subconscious bias in allocation of re

    • >As it turns out... the Media did say that numbers
      >were up, but not percentage of the vote. I clearly
      >recall hearing that election night.

      I clearly remember hearing the same, so this article wasn't news to me either. Personally, I think this is a case of the reactionary and non-critical listeners catching up with the people who were listening carefully in the first place.

      Now to your trollish quip:
      >You crazy Dems. are gonna have to live up to the fact
      >that your party base would rather Stay at
      • I think that you need to think about the demographic that lives in the areas you speak of though.. The people in Urban areas, whom tend to be Democrats, historically are lazy at voting. It is a trend that has plagued the Dems. for a while. That is why I said "your party base would rather Stay at Home then vote if it ment them going through rain, or waiting in line.", because that is seriously the case. I am in the "youth vote category", and while I hate to put my "people" in a stereotype, the youth vote is

        • so what's your logic here, "they're democrats, therefore they're lazy" or "they live in urban areas, therefore they're lazy"?

          i don't really appreciate hearing either.
          • Actually... my logic was the demographic that the Dems. normally win. Young Registered voters did not vote this time around. Pick up any book relating to American Government and Elections and it will tell you that Democrats historically have a poor voter turn out. If every registered voter would have voted, the Dems. would have won by a landslide, that however is not the case. And why would you not appreciate hearing it ? If it is fact, then why do you hide from it. I am sure you "wish" that wasn't the cas

            • I do not dispute that these groups vote less. I look BEYOND that single statistic and ask "WHY?" What I dispute is that it is laziness. There are some very real issues worthy of addressal that prevent the ease of voting that suburban/rural areas get. It is very CRUEL to dismiss urban-waited-in-line-3-hours-and-gave-up-person, and minority-scared-away-person (I admit, that didn't happen this time so I hear--good job gov--but it definetly DID last time) alongside non-political-young-person. I have no idea whe

  • They still don't think their vote counts (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KevinIsOwn ( 618900 ) <(herrkevin) (at) (gmail.com)> on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:30PM (#10807350) Homepage
    As a college freshman at RIT, I can tell you first hand that people here still do not think their vote counts. That is, if they are not from a swing state. I didn't meet one person who was from a swing state who didn't vote, but I met numerous from the state's that were considered to be "taken" by one candidate or the other.

    Students just felt that it was a waste of time voting in these states. It's hard to convince them to take the time when the winner is essentially decided. They don't get it that they are contributing to the popular vote, making their opinion known, and helping to ensure there is no upset in that state. Unfortunately nobody is sending these messages over the media. All students hear is "Vote or Die," and "Rock the vote," which came here and perpetuated the feeling that both sides just talk and talk, but never listen by having two large sheets of paper where people could write their opinions. There was a Kerry paper and a Bush paper, and all that came out of it was how much Bush sucks, or how much Kerry flip-flops, or how there is no paper for Nader and that Rock the Vote perpetuates a two party system.

    What the young need is a new approach to get them to vote. One that emphasizes how much their vote counts, rather than how cool it is to vote, or how P-Diddy and his gang of thugs will kill you if you don't vote. The big names and celebrities should still be involved, they are great at getting a message out to people, however they need to reform their message to one that more accurately addresses the reasons young people do not vote.

  • Media probably just repeated GOP spin (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cryofan ( 194126 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @02:28PM (#10807611) Journal
    They are too lazy to actually do any real research, and the GOp probably wanted to dampen any bnadwagon effect, and fed the media that no-youth-vote spin, and the media reported it, like the good little lapdogs they are.....
  • Too many posts start with the assumption that everyone should vote. I can't think what supports this. Everyone who cares, or has an interest should probably vote but consider this:

    1. Why should someone with no property care how I get taxed?

    2. Why should someone with no children care how schools are operated?

    3. Why should someone with 60 productive years ahead of him worry about his retirement plan?

    Of course there are exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions, not the norm. It seems to me as l
    • 1. Because someone they love might have property and they care for them.

      2. Because someone they love might have kids, and they care for them.

      3. Because someone they love might be retiring sometime soon, and they care for them.

      It's not all about "me, me, me!", you know. I wonder how you voted... ;)

  • I'm at the upper end of "young voters", I'm 29. I've been registered for over 11 years. I have missed exactly 1 election since I registered. It was a primary and I didn't support any of the candidates and there were no ballot initiatives.

    That old addage that "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" is true about lazy ass potential voters. You can present him with the issues, but you can't make him think.

    If it takes P. Diddy and Andre 3000 to make you vote, you shouldn't be voting.

    LK
  • That's the exact story that I've always read since the day after the election. The percentage of kids wasn't any more than in 2000. Everyone expected that the kids would show up in a higher percentage than everyone else, but didn't. That's why its a story. No story said that the young turnout was less than 2000.
  • It seems the media jumped to conclusions when it said, right after the election, that 18-to-29 year olds didn't turn out in record numbers. In fact, the participation of every age group was up, including young voters, but the youth vote wasn't up any more than other age groups

    It would seem to me that the poster jumped to conclusions. I have heard and read about this same analysis on CNN and FoxNews several times since the election. I believe I recall this very fact being talked about the next day (after

  • Ok, I dislike Bush and Kerry equally.. But that's not why I choose not to vote. I personally think the entire system needs to be completely restructured. We make a big fuss about voting for a few months every 4 years and then we ignore it. We vote for a person who we believe will represent us best. Well that's the problem right there.. Why not represent your views all the time?!

    Get rid of all politions!! We don't need them anymore. We live in an age where our techology allows us to communicate with the ent

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