Photo courtesy of vrogy
Abby Kiesa works at CIRCLE, a national, non-partisan research center on young people's civic and political engagement. CIRCLE is based at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship & Public Service at Tufts University.
This year’s elections proved the importance of the youth vote as a powerful factor in shaping the greater American voice in politics and government. This post is part of a special series looking at how youth in America can remain active and civically engaged in government, now that the 2012 elections have ended.
Youth engagement in the 2012 election first confused, then surprised, many people. Youth voter turnout was predicted to be lower than in 2008, but the results rivaled it instead.
Research points to many influences on youth political engagement, and just about every factor has to do with exposure and opportunity. Toby Crittenden, from the Washington Bus, used a metaphor this election cycle to describe what outreach to young voters is NOT about: it’s not like chasing unicorns. This metaphor rings true in many ways, as research shows that engagement is not often serendipitous, it doesn't happen randomly, and young people (18 to 29) are not rare – they are a large chunk of both eligible (21 percent) and actual (19 percent) voters.
Civic engagement happens because youth are connected to networks where others are engaged (e.g., friends, family, work, school), exposed to opportunities for engagement, and belong to systems that can lead to further learning and opportunity. Conventional engagement does not happen without these elements, although online tools are adding new forms of networking that promote some forms of engagement.
Yet there’s a downside to these research findings. We can and should celebrate youth engagement and young people taking the lead. However, current research shows that youth with more resources have more opportunity to be engaged, and this difference plays out in participation rates. We see this both in communities and in schools. In a midterm election year like 2010, those youth who were broadly engaged (21.3 percent of youth 18 to 29) and those involved with multiple forms of political engagement (17.5 percent of youth 18 to 29), were also more likely (when compared to the overall youth population) to be Caucasian, highly educated, and come from higher income backgrounds.
We shouldn’t be satisfied with any level of youth engagement if particular subsets youth have less opportunity to engage, especially if youth with less opportunity come from communities historically under-represented in the democratic process (which goes beyond voting). How helpful are entrepreneurship and innovation if they don’t further democracy?
While many people within the youth engagement community celebrated the fact that youth showed up for the 2012 elections at greater rates than expected, we must continually examine who those young people were. Are we reaching a good representation of the young people who could vote, or mainly those who are easiest to turn out?
We shouldn’t be satisfied with any level of youth engagement that elevates some communities over others – especially if youth who have fewer opportunities to engage are part of communities that have been historically under-represented in the democratic process.
One example is the cumulative influence of the education system. We estimate that 66 percent of youth who have any college experience voted in the 2012 election, while 35 percent of youth who either dropped out of high school or have not gone on to college did so.
The good news is that there is a long list of organizations who have been doing this important engagement work for a long time and are well-positioned this minute to help address these gaps by authentically engaging the communities that have been left behind by how civic opportunities are often distributed:
- Youth Organizing (for youth under 18, see the research done by the Funders Committee on Youth Organizing, and for youth of voting age check out the members of the Generational Alliance)
- Online opportunities/exposure (see the recent research by Cathy Cohen and Joe Kahne about online participatory politics)
- Cultural organizing (see The League of Young Voters)
- Job programs that emphasize civic leadership (see YouthBuild)
If we want to engage more young people in civic life or in the democratic process, there are organizations ready to ramp-up and move. We just need to decide that’s really what we want to do.