The youth flex their muscles

If you watched students parade down Kirkwood Avenue after Barack Obama’s victory, you might have been sure youth turnout exploded during this election.

You would have been wrong.

Despite all the advertisements, celebrity endorsements and persistent volunteers, the youth vote was a mixed bag of accomplishment and disappointment.

First the good news: 90 percent of voters who registered at on-campus polling locations (i.e. IU students) showed up to cast their ballots. IU students should be commended for being so active in the historical election. Monroe County gave more than 41,000 votes to Obama compared to 21,000 for John McCain.

Those on Facebook could see the impact of the election immediately Tuesday night, as status updates turned to declarations of joy and anger.

Now the bad news: Voter turnout only increased 1 percent to 6 percent among all young voters compared with the 2004 election. Half of the eligible voters younger than 30 showed up on Election Day, contributing 18 percent of the voter turnout. Comparing this to a total turnout of 65 percent as a nation, it’s clear we still have a lot of work to do as a generation.

It’s been easy to assume voter turnout was great everywhere based on the results on this campus, but those farther away from college towns seem to have generally decided to not “rock the vote.” They didn’t vote in this election.

One almost has to wonder, assuming their houses aren’t seized through eminent domain and the draft isn’t reinstated, if they ever will.

Young voters did matter in this election. They swung things in Obama’s favor not by increased turnout, but by making a massive shift away from the Republican Party.

In 2000, the youth vote was split rather evenly between Bush and Gore. Compare those numbers to about 66 percent of youth voters who went for Obama, and the impact we made is clear.

We congratulate our campus for the concern it showed for the fate of our country – an increase in turnout of 287 percent is nothing to shake your head at.

While we have made our marks on the first of many ballots to come, we can only hope that as our peers get older, they see the advantages of being politically active – even if it means longer lines at the polls.