Youth vote soars near record numbers
The much vaunted youth vote, heralded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students thrust into the spotlight after a shooting at their school, is indeed coming out in record numbers — but then, so is everyone else.
Voters age 18 to 29 are about 17 percent of total registered voters in Florida. But according to University of Florida political science professor Daniel Smith, with roughly half of young voters having cast a ballot so far, the age group makes up 8.2 percent of the ballots cast through Monday
morning.
That’s an improvement from the 2014 midterm election, when young voters represented just 5.6 percent of all early and mail-in votes.
“You have to look at it as a glass half full and glass half empty. Relative to typical midterm turnout, young voters are getting out and voting early and by mail in historic numbers,” Smith said. “But the glass half empty is, those historic numbers are really low.”
Some 420,000 young voters have cast ballots early or by mail this year so far, about 220,000 more than at this point in the 2014 midterms. But with other groups all outperforming their previous vote totals as well, the increase isn’t casting as long a shadow as it could.
“Younger voters tend to wait until last minute to vote. That’s historically always been the case. The problem is, when you wait till the last day, something might come up. And so even those with the best laid plans and intentions get waylaid on Election Day,” Smith said. “I would love to be proven wrong. There are certainly a lot of young voters who still haven’t voted.”
The big jump in young voters appears to have little to do with one factor that could have played a major role — the end of Florida’s ban on universities as early voting sites.
When a federal judge tossed out Florida’s four-year-old ban on colleges and universities as early voting sites in July, voting rights activists hailed it as a victory.
“This is truly a victory for the citizens of Florida, especially with so many young people motivated to vote,” Patricia Brigham, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, said after the ruling. “The court ruling demonstrates that making it easier for our students to vote truly matters ... With this decision, we have an affirmation that making early voting accessible to all is part of a true democracy.”
But nine counties opted to use colleges or universities as early voting sites this year, and in almost every case, those sites were among the poorest performing, a South Florida Sun Sentinel analysis of early voting turnout numbers shows.
Of Broward County’s 22 early voting sites, Nova Southeastern University came in a distant last place with 4,871 voters. The next worst location for turnout was a supervisor of elections office in Pompano Beach with 6,991.
And in Palm Beach County, Florida Atlantic University came in 13th out of 14 early voting sites, beating only a library branch in relatively remote Belle Glade.
That pattern played out across the state. In Miami-Dade County, the North and Kendall campuses of Miami-Dade College came in 26th and 25th place out of 28 early voting sites. Florida International University performed marginally better at 20th place.
In Duval County, Edward Waters College and the University of North Florida were the 20th and 19th place finishers, respectively, of the county’s 20 early voting sites.
In Escambia County, the University of West Florida was eighth out of nine sites.
In Hillsborough County, the University of South Florida was 16th out of 20 early voting sites.
In Orange County, the University of Central Florida was 16th out of 16 early voting sites.
Florida’s top two universities were exceptions to the rule, both placing in the middle of the pack. The University of Florida’s J. Wayne Reitz Union saw 7,908 people vote early, good for third place of Alachua County’s six early voting sites. And the 6,113 people who voted early at Florida State University’s Tucker Center meant fifth place in voter turnout among Leon County’s nine sites.
In all 59,309 early voters cast their ballots at colleges and universities. Almost 2.7 million Floridians voted early, with another 2.4 million mailing in ballots through Monday morning.