Youths are registering, but will they vote?
Not even the rap star Jay-Z can inspire the youth to vote like the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, said Andy Bernstein, who leads a national organization seeking to boost voter turnout in the midterm elections.
“There is no doubt that there is a real wave happening,” he said. “Right now, kids are registering for the midterm elections like we’ve never seen.”
Bernstein said his group HeadCount — which in the past has worked with musicians to boost voter turnout — has seen its highest numbers ever of young people registering to vote because of its partnership with Parkland students.
Stoneman Douglas student and gun-control advocate David Hogg put it this way: “The young people will win.”
But will student activism reverse years of low turnouts of younger voters in nonpresidential elections? Will it outpace Jay-Z’s public service announcements in previous contests to get people to the polls? So far, it’s hard to say.
Between the beginning of the year and the end of April, 30, 318 people aged 18-21 registered to vote — about 3,000 more than the same period in 2014, according to an analysis of voter registration rolls by the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
But this year’s total is likely to be far higher, because it does not include 17-year-olds who signed up because they will turn 18 before the Nov. 6 general election, said Sarah Revell, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of State.
In 2014, that number was about 15,000 people.
“Every election, people try to point to a silver bullet that will cause youth turnout to increase.” David Nickerson, professor of political science
Bernstein, director of HeadCount, said he’s doing his best to push those numbers even higher. In the past, his group headquartered in New York City has partnered with musicians that include Jay-Z, Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters to get young people to the polls.
Now, he’s working with Hogg. More than 1,500 schools in 46 states launched voter-registration drives, and HeadCount is planning to register voters at hundreds of concerts and cultural events this summer, including a Dave Matthews Band concert this summer in West Palm Beach, Bernstein said.
Bernstein said the Parkland students — with a social media platform that has drawn more than 1 million followers — are producing unparalleled results. Their key message is one that favors Democratic candidates — that tighter restrictions are needed on guns, and politicians supported by the National Rifle Association need to be removed from office.
HeadCount recorded more than 5,000 new registrations during March for Our Lives rallies in Washington and 29 other cities, its highest single-day total ever, Bernstein said.
Another possible sign of higher turnout is that young people are telling pollsters they are planning to vote. In a poll conducted by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, 37 percent of Americans younger than 30 indicated that they will “definitely be voting” in the midterm elections, compared to 23 percent who said the same in 2014 and 31 percent in 2010.
The poll found that among likely young voters 69 percent are favoring Democrats.
Brian Franklin, a political consultant with Westonbased Impact Politics, said he isn’t convinced yet there will be a fundamental shift in voting patterns. He’s waiting to see if youth voting jumps in Florida’s Aug. 28 primary election.
“There were many times we thought young people were coming to the polls for this reason or that reason but they didn't,” said Franklin, who works with Democratic candidates. “We'll know in August."
With limited resources, most campaigns will target so-called “high-propensity” voters — people who have a history of voting reliably in elections — rather than spending large sums catering to younger voters, he said.
Millennials are poised to surpass Baby Boomers as the largest living adult generation next year, according to the Pew Research Center. But grandma and grandpa — not college students and young professionals — are still the most potent political decider.
In Florida, the overall turnout for the 2014 general election was 51 percent, compared to 22 percent for people age 21 and younger, the Sun Sentinel analysis found.
While registration numbers for younger voters did spike in March, the numbers also rose during the same time in 2014, according to an analysis by Daniel Smith, a political scientist at the University of Florida. Other factors could be driving the rise, he wrote on his blog, such as ramped-up voter registration drives by the state’s 67 elections supervisors.
“Many of the students and other young people in Florida who were understandably and genuinely mobilized to register after the Parkland shootings would have registered anyway at one of these events, just as many of their older brothers and sisters did four years earlier,” he wrote.
Smith concluded that it’s too early to draw conclusions about the Parkland movement and voting.
Converting new registrations into actual votes can be painstakingly difficult, said David Nickerson, a professor of political science at Temple University. For every 1,000 people who are signed up in a voter registration drive, typically only 125 of those people cast votes in an election who otherwise wouldn’t, he said.
“Every election cycle, people try to point to a silver bullet that will cause youth turnout to increase,” Nickerson said. “It doesn't usually happen.”
Although the jury is still out, Franklin said the rise of social media is making a difference. Parkland advocate Emma Gonzalez’s 1.6 million Twitter followers far exceed the reach of any campaign account in Florida, he said.
And in competitive races where every vote counts, even a small uptick in youth voting could make a difference, Franklin said.
In the meantime, the Parkland students are continuing to hammer home their message.
“People have died for your right to vote,” Hogg wrote on one Twitter post to his 815,000 followers. “Are you registered?”