Young people have never voted in great numbers, so I am not surprised that in the 2016 election, people 18-34 had a much lower turnout that older voters. Nonetheless, the rate of turnout for Millennials is truly abysmal.
The January issue of Governing, a magazine devoted to state and local government, ran a chart of the voting turnout of Millennials (18-34) in the thirty largest cities in local elections between 2011 and 2015. This is registered voter turnout.
I won’t list all thirty, but here are the percentages in a few selected cities. I’lll give you the percentage for 65+ in those same cities. M stands for Millennials; OP stands for old people.
Fort Worth M: 1.1% OP: 25.7%
New York M; 7.6 OP: 30.7
Philly M: 11.6 OP: 45.5
Boston M: 28.0 OP: 66.1
Portland M: 56.7 OP: 88.4
If you are wondering about Portland, Oregon, I should point out that Oregon registers all of its citizens to vote automatically and voting is done by mail. Oregon is the one true democracy of the 50 states.
ReplyDeleteA couple of years ago we were in Portland and around the state. One of the things I noticed is the people seem to be more interested in politics. They also are one of the few states without a sales tax. And they are more progressive than most states. The automatic registration seems to be working in Oregon.
We once saw the states as laboratories. If something worked well in one state other states would adopt it. This no longer seems to be happening very much.
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