Young voter turnout seems to hinge on where they live
High school and college students across central Ohio held high-profile rallies against school gun violence in early 2018 to protest a string of U.S. school shootings, led voter-registration drives and promised to rock the polls in November.
And in Franklin County, young people showed up in greater numbers than typical, according to a review of voter turnout in the hotly contested 12th Congressional District, a race that got national attention.
But the farther they lived outside the Columbus metro area, the number of 18- to 22-year-olds participating in the November election fell off dramatically in District 12, with vastly more registered young people sitting out the November election than voting in the most rural areas, according to data released last week by the Ohio Secretary of State’s office.
More than 53 percent of young voters in the Franklin County portion of District 12 cast a ballot in November. While that was below the 55.7 percent statewide turnout for all ages, it was 10 points higher than the 43 percent of the 18 to 22 age group that voted across the seven counties that in whole or in part make up the 12th District.
The common wisdom is that young people don’t vote, said Dan Mckay, executive director of the Franklin County Democratic Party. But the Franklin County stats for District 12 defied that.
“It outperforms the Obama elections for sure among that age group,” which would have been in the 30 percent to 40 percent turnout range, Mckay said. A typical midterm election, such as the one in 2010, would see about 25 percent turnout for that demographic, he said. Republican Troy Balderson still defeated Democrat Danny O’connor for the 12th Congressional District seat— 51.6 percent to 47 percent — but it was a surprisingly close margin for the gerrymandered GOP stronghold that former Republican Rep. Pat Tiberi won by almost 37 points in 2016.
Balderson likely was helped by the fact that Republicanleaning Delaware County had the highest voter turnout across all age groups of any county in the state, at just under 68 percent.
“The (Republican) party had a very large operation in Delaware County,” said Blaine Kelly, spokesman for the state GOP. “We knew that that was the key county for the 12th Congressional District.”
Delaware County is a “high-information, pretty affluent county” that is always among the highest in voter turnout, and the “nationalized nature of the local campaign obviously had a lot to do with it,” said Doug Preisse, Franklin County GOP executive committee chairman. “A lot of eyes were on them.”
Even so, only 44.3 percent of Delaware County’s registered 18- to 22-year-olds voted, about 24 percentage points below that county’s overall turnout and about 9 points below their Franklin County counterparts.
In fact, the farther District 12’s registered young people lived outside the Columbus metro area, the less likely they were to vote, the data show. In the portion of District 12 in Balderson’s home county of Muskingum, less than 23 percent of those 18 to 22 voted.
“Many of us have spent decades trying to encourage young people to vote,” Preisse said. “Historically, they are the lowest voting demographic. It’s a challenging phenomenon— hard to connect with them.”
Franklin County and southern Delaware County “was the real battleground where the Democrats were putting in most of their effort of getting out their votes,” including at Ohio State University and Columbus State Community College, Preisse said.
Franklin County Democratic Party Chairman Mike Sexton agreed: “Younger voters were part of our base. We really need to turn them out to be successful here, and they came out in very good numbers.”
The Dispatch reported in October that more than 10,000 young people who live in the 12th District had registered to vote since midfebruary, when the nation’s most deadly high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, triggered high school and college walkouts and studentregistration drives. That was almost twice the number of 18- to 22-year-olds living in the district who registered to vote during the same period before the last midterm election in 2014, and 14.4 percent more than leading up to the higher-profile 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Those new voters swelled the congressional district’s rolls for the 18-22 age group by more than 38 percent since mid-february, when a gunman killed 17 people and injured 17 more at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
bbush@dispatch.com @Reporterbush