Voter Turnout among Youth Hits High Mark; Campus Efforts Play a Role

Turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds reflects a new spirit of engagement among younger voters. College-based voter registration and education efforts, including Campus Compact’s nonpartisan 2008 Campus Vote Initiative, played a major role in raising awareness of the importance of civic participation among these voters, as well as others, nationwide.

November 6, 2008

Boston, MA – Some 22–24 million voters in the 18- to 29-year-old age group went to the polls on Tuesday, a turnout rate that hasn’t been seen in decades, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). Those under 30 made up an estimated 18% of all voters, only a small increase over the last election, but that increase translates into at least 2 million more young voters than went to the polls in 2004.

“The high voter turnout demonstrates young people’s desire for—and success in—getting their voices heard,” says Maureen F. Curley, president of Campus Compact. “It’s a strong indicator of their increasing willingness to take responsibility for the health of their local, national, and global communities.”

Curley praised get-out-the-vote efforts on colleges and universities across the country. “We saw campuses of all types working to encourage civil discussion of critical issues, stress the importance of participatory democracy, and give students the information they needed to register and vote.”

Colleges and universities used a variety of approaches to encourage student engagement. At the University of California Santa Barbara, students going door-to-door in the dorms registered 2,400 voters in a single night. Students at North Carolina Central University helped run major registration drives in adjacent communities. Springfield College in Massachusetts registered students as they moved into the dorms and set a goal of registering every eligible student. Ohio’s John Carroll University created an election web page, sponsored an election-related discussion series, and set up voter registration locations across campus.

Hundreds of other campuses established similar efforts, aided in many cases by Campus Compact’s 34 state offices. These offices were active in promoting election-related activities through the organization’s nonpartisan 2008 Campus Vote Initiative, which served as a clearinghouse of information for students.

Curley notes that these campus efforts reached well beyond the under-30 cohort. “Programs like Campus Compact’s 2008 Campus Vote Initiative were designed to engage college students of any age—including the increasing number of older students,” she says. “In addition, many campus programs included a community element, where students helped register and remind non-students to vote.”

In addition to voter registration and education, campuses worked to ensure that registered students followed through and voted. To gauge the success of these efforts, Tufts University created the Campus Votes Challenge, which provides third-party verification of the undergraduate voting rate at participating schools. To date, 60 colleges and universities from across the country, representing more than 400,000 students, have registered for the challenge.

“The Campus Votes Challenge is a great way for schools to measure their impact,” praises Curley. “It’s not enough to register students to vote, you’ve got to make sure they get to the polls to make their voice heard. This year, it appears that students have spoken, and spoken loudly.”