Kelly Coons ’22 | Assistant Opinions Editor
“Dear young people, don’t vote.” I’m sure, as election day approaches, you’ve been hearing this public service announcement (PSA) a lot. Have you ever stopped to watch the whole thing, though? It’s a lot of old, white people sneering at the screen, but I encourage you to because I will be tearing this public service announcement apart.
Firstly, let me just say that I don’t disagree with the PSA’s message — the youth of America need to go out and vote. I also want to recognize the statistics that spawned this public service announcement.
The Census Bureau has been keeping track of voting turnout per age group since 1980. Data shows that since then, the average turnout for 18 to 29 year-old voters is 46.42 percent, with the exception of the 1992 and 2008 elections where voter turnout was more than half. Meanwhile, the 65 and older demographic has been the most consistent voting bloc. Since 1980, the mean percentage of senior citizen voters is 72.31 percent and there has never been a presidential election in which less than half of eligible senior citizens voted.
While it is true that seniors tend toward conservative and youths lean liberal, that does not mean that senior citizens should be villainized in order to mobilize the youth vote. Since 1992, the Pew Research Center has polled people on their party affiliation. In 2016, 57 percent of millennials (age 18 to age 35) were either registered Democrat or independents who leaned Democrat, versus 36 percent of their Republican-leaning counterparts.
The same research found that Baby Boomers (age 52 to 70) and the so-called Silent Generation (age 71 to 88) were 49 and 53 percent Republican-leaning respectively.
This does not mean, however, that these opposing groups need to be enemies. At the end of 2017, Gallup did a poll asking Americans a simple question, a question they have asked regularly: Do you think it is more important for leaders in Washington to stick to their beliefs or compromise? 54 percent of Americans answered that they believed it was more important to compromise. Only 18 percent said that they think sticking to beliefs, even if little is done, was more important: a new low for the poll. Only those who identified as “very conservative” favored sticking to beliefs: 41 percent, not even the majority. Meanwhile, 55 percent of those who identified as “very liberal” favored compromise, second only to self-identified moderates. What does that say?
