CIRCLE Poll Find Most 18-29 Year Old Voters are Misinformed about their States’ Voting Laws
Tufts University’s preeminent academic research arm for young Americans, the Center for Information & Learning on Research & Civic Engagement (CIRCLE), announced the roll-out of an "online hub," serving as a portal for a variety of young voter related information, for their newly-launched YouthTruth campaign.
Last week, CIRCLE launched a public awareness and education campaign, YouthTruth, designed to dispel myths about the civic engagement of young Americans, particularly during this 2012 presidential election. Located at http://www.civicyouth.org/splash, this online hub of young voter related information -- produced by CIRCLE’s team of experts -- will serve as a “one-stop shop” for information relating to the role young Americans are playing in this year’s political and electoral process.
Among other things, the new online portal will contain:
• Quick facts on youth voting;
• Infographics about the attitudes and engagement of young voters;
• Blog posts providing analysis of the latest research;
• Fact-checking of the information being disseminated publicly and conversations happening in the news media around young voters;
• A library of other research and analysis on information relating to the civic engagement of America's youth.
“Already, young voters are the topic of conversations in news reports, editorial pieces and cablenews debates across the country,” said Peter Levine, director of CIRCLE. “Our YouthTruth public awareness and education initiative, along with today’s newly-launched online portal, is intended to provide data and analysis aimed at making sure those conversations about the civic engagement of young voters are better informed and more accurate. Instead of relying on common misperceptions, we hope opinion leaders, journalists, bloggers and others first access this information online and reach out to our team of experts to inform their discussions about voters 29 and under.”
CIRCLE Poll Find Most 18-29 Year Old Voters Are Misinformed about their States’ Voting Laws
In conjunction with the launch of The YouthTruth campaign initiative, focused on dispelling myths about young voters and shattering stereotypes of a potentially decisive voting bloc this November, CIRCLE released the details of a nationwide poll.
Commissioned by the Youth Engagement Fund and conducted between June 22 and July 2, 2012 by Knowledge Networks, the poll surveyed 1,695 U.S. citizens between the ages of 18 and 29. African-Americans, Latinos, and individuals who have never attended college were all oversampled. The survey, conducted online in both English and Spanish, looked at young Americans’ views on the 2012 election, including their choice of presidential candidate on a range of factors, as well as issues influencing their votes and engagement this election cycle.
“Young voters are too often viewed as a homogenous group,” said CIRCLE’s Director, Peter Levine. “The goal of the YouthTruth initiative -- launched today with the release of a comprehensive, nationwide poll of young Americans -- is to dispel the mythology around this group of 46 million Americans who in reality are very diverse and, given their economic futures, have more at stake in 2012 than any older group.”
Key findings from the poll revealed:
Young people hold mixed opinions of Barack Obama, but they prefer him by a 55%-42% over Mitt Romney, whom most see as a “typical politician.” Young people are split about evenly on the recent health care reform, with the largest group (41.2%) uncertain. Somewhat more of them favor government spending to strengthen the economy rather than cutting spending and taxes. Eleven percent say that they support the Tea Party, and 14.9% say they support Occupy Wall Street, but less than 2% say they have personally participated in Occupy protests.
Most are misinformed about the rules that govern voting in their own states, with substantial majorities misunderstanding or not knowing about photo ID requirements or requirements to register at least 30 days before the election.
When asked whether they planned to vote, 41% of all the young people said this was extremely likely, and another 17% said it was likely. Only a small group said they were currently unregistered yet planning to vote in November (11.6% of those not registered at the time of the poll said they were extremely likely to vote in November). A majority said they had been paying some or a lot of attention to the campaign.
Obama Leads Romney
Almost 34% of respondents said they would “definitely” vote for Barack Obama if the election were held today, versus 16.1% who would definitely vote for Mitt Romney. Note that when Rock the Vote surveyed a similar sample in May 2008, 52% of young people said they would vote for Barack Obama, and 39% said they would vote for John McCain, but Obama won 68% of the actual youth vote in 2008.
Barack Obama was seen as better understanding the problems of young people, by a 62.5%-27.4% margin. He also led on all other specific questions about favorability. The 2008 exit poll (of actual voters) asked: Which candidate do you think is in touch with people like you? 69% of young voters answered Obama and 36% McCain.
Almost half of young people were either admiring of (14.4%) or satisfied with (34.6%) President Obama, but the largest single group (39%) was disappointed. Just 9.5% described themselves as “angry” at him. Of those who were angry, 67.5% identified themselves as slightly to extremely conservative, 25.1% were moderate, 3.5% were slightly liberal, and 3.8% were liberal or extremely liberal.
Economic Issues Dominate
By a very wide margin, young people chose economic issues as the most important for politicians to address: “jobs and the economy” was the top choice of 33%, followed by the cost of college and student loans and the federal budget deficit, both at 11%. No other issue reached double digits. When asked about specific economic issues that might affect their presidential vote, the top choices were lack of jobs (21.1%), student debt (11.9%) and rising health-care costs (8.8%). More than one in four said that the cost of college had prevented them personally from getting the college education they wanted. Almost one in five had moved back with their parents after living alone because of the economic downturn.
By a two-to-one margin, young people thought the country was moving in the wrong direction. Most thought the election could make at least a small positive difference in their own lives and communities.
Alexandra Acker-Lyons, Director of YEF, expressed her enthusiasm about the YEF poll. “We're excited to share more in-depth knowledge about the Millennial generation and dispel many persistent myths about the youth vote. Clearly, young people are concerned about many key issues and are paying attention to this important election.”
Biko Baker, Executive Director of the League of Young Voters said, "This important poll gives us some much-needed information about how a large portion of the electorate perceives this election cycle. Any organization, funder, candidate, or activist concerned about the future should check out this report. Young voters are far too sophisticated and diverse to ignore.”
For a complete look at the poll’s top lines and analysis provided by CIRCLE’s team of youth experts, go to: http://www.civicyouth.org/?p=3951.
YouthTruth to Dispel Myths
Utilizing youth voter-focused research and analysis, YouthTruth will disseminate election-related data from CIRCLE and will allow the public and media to bring misinformation to CIRCLE's attention by using the Twitter hashtag #YouthTruth. In turn, CIRCLE's leading team of experts will help monitor media coverage of 18- to 29-year-old voters and disseminate accurate data with exclusive analysis.
Through the YouthTruth campaign, CIRCLE will continue to release exclusive publications and studies, provide analysis of new laws that may affect turnout this November, and facilitate discussions with other organizations on the frontlines of youth voter engagement and civic empowerment.
“We launched YouthTruth with the release of this year’s most comprehensive, in-depth national poll taking a look at the attitudes and opinions of young voters 29 and under,” concluded Levine. “Today’s poll release is just the first in what we hope will be many more important, valuable insights into this important voting bloc.”
Utilizing youth voter-focused research and analysis, YouthTruth will disseminate election-related data from CIRCLE and will allow the public and media to bring misinformation to CIRCLE's attention by using the Twitter hashtag #YouthTruth. In turn, CIRCLE's leading team of experts will help monitor media coverage of 18 to 29 year-old voters and disseminate accurate data with exclusive analysis.
Through the YouthTruth campaign, CIRCLE will continue to release exclusive publications and studies, provide analysis of new laws that may affect turnout this November, and facilitate discussions with other organizations on the frontlines of youth voter engagement and civic empowerment.
Learn more about the YouthTruth campaign on CIRCLE's website; follow @CivicYouth on Twitter.
Sign-up to receive copies of CIRCLE's cutting-edge research on young Americans and next-day voter turnout estimates for the 2012 elections by emailing brad@lunamediagroup.com.
CIRCLE (www.civicyouth.org) is a nonpartisan, independent, academic research center that studies young people in politics and presents detailed data on young voters in all 50 states. CIRCLE was founded in 2001 with a generous gift from the Pew Charitable Trusts and is part of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University.
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