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Daily Kos, Meteor Blades:
Young Americans, those aged 18 to 29, are always the demographic that votes least. The record turnout came in 1972 when 52%-55% of under-30 voters showed up at the polls. Young voters approached that record in 1992 and 2008. We don’t yet know whether the nationwide youth turnout finally beat that record in 2020, but we do know there was a big surge of young voters in Georgiathis year. Youth voters contributed 21% of the state’s overall vote, the highest in the nation for that age group, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE, at the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. Nationally, the average was 17% this year, compared to 16% in 2016. Young voters skewed heavily Democratic, casting ballots for Bidenabout 18%more than for Trump. But there was a serious difference. African American youth voted 90% for Biden while 62% of young white voters went for Trump. Said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, the director of CIRCLE, “If young people came out in a slighter smaller number—if they came out like the rest of the country—Biden would still be losing.” That increase turnout is a product of years of grassroots organizing sparked by Stacey Abrams’ powerful but unsuccessful 2018 run for the Georgia governorship and her post-election work to boost turnout among Democrats in the state, with an emphasis on combatting voter suppression and curbing disenfranchisement.
TheNew Georgia Project, Campus Vote Project,Students for 2020,andOpportunity Youth United all hired young volunteers and put strong efforts into luring young voters to the polls on social media. “These numbers are not magical,” said Ciarra Malone, Georgia’s State Coordinator for the Campus Vote Project. “Georgia is only a battleground state right now because of the youth vote and how many young people in the Atlanta area have turned out to vote. Organizers, especially young organizers, have been working especially hard.”
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