What Young Voters Want

January 24, 2002 | This article appeared in the February 11, 2002 edition of The Nation.

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Following the attacks of September 11, young Americans, like all Americans, were quick to display signs of patriotism. Military recruiters reported that inquiries and interviews rose, though there has been no discernible increase in the number of people actually joining the armed forces. Americorps administrators noted an upswing of interest in national service among young people, as Senators John McCain and Evan Bayh called for substantially expanding the program. In fact, young people's feelings of patriotism, which are generally weaker than those of the older generation, rose in the aftermath of the tragedy. According to "Public Response to a National Tragedy," a study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center in late September, young people's pride in American democracy rose from 14 percent in 1996 to 48 percent post-September 11.

About the Author

Anna Greenberg

Anna Greenberg, vice president of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, is also an assistant professor at Harvard...

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Since election night, pundits and politicians, as well as academics and armchair commentators, have spent an enormous amount of time wringing their hands about the mistakes made in calling Florida and the role the exit polls may or may not have had in the process. Although understanding the decisions behind the calls is important, it obscures the equally important fact that most of the national polls were wrong for at least the final two weeks before the election.

Of the eleven national polls and trackers released between November 5 and 6, only two surveys showed Gore leading Bush (CBS and Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby), while one poll showed the candidates tied (Harris). The remaining eight polls showed Gore losing, one by as much as 5 percentage points, which would have been the equivalent of a landslide. While many of these surveys in the final analysis lay within the margin of error, all the polls were biased in the same direction. With the Bush lead firmly established in the media polls throughout October, pundits for the most part were ready to give the race to Bush, even though Gore won the popular vote and probably won Florida.

Polls play an increasingly central part in election coverage as the horse race becomes a greater and greater media preoccupation. With survey results, the press can breathlessly report the impact of events and gaffes, like Gore's performance in the debates or Bush's abuse of the English language. The twists and turns of the race are cloaked in the scientific mantle of survey research, like the results of the Gallup tracking poll used by CNN and USA Today, which once showed an eighteen-point shift in the electorate in the course of a couple of nights.

Although we understand a great deal about the science of polling, the methodology of these surveys relies on a set of debatable assumptions about who is most likely to turn out and vote on Election Day. This year most experts predicted low turnout, meaning that only the most motivated voters--normally the most highly educated and affluent citizens--would find their way to the polls. Generally, low turnout favors the Republicans, since high socioeconomic status is associated with both political participation and conservative political preferences.

To accommodate these predictions, the polls screened tightly for those most likely to vote, adjusted for predicted turnout and in some cases "weighted up" the GOP share in the sample. All those adjustments meant that most of the national polls going into Election Day showed a 2- to 5-point Bush lead, even when individual state polls showed Gore performing much better. In fact, one of the great mysteries during the campaign was how Gore could hold leads or remain tied in so many battleground states and trail Bush so consistently in the national polls. One answer was simply that those polls were wrong. In fact, internal Gore polling showed the race tied and stable for the last two weeks of the campaign.

Why did the media polls employ those methodological criteria even in the face of serious get-out-the-vote efforts by the NAACP and the labor unions to bring out the Democratic base? First, the polling outlets were burned in 1996 when they overstated the size of Clinton's lead over Dole throughout much of the campaign. Second, the media outlets are competing for market share in an ever-expanding universe of polling data. In the course of this competition, they develop "proprietary" models for determining the composition of samples, with a premium on having the most scientific method for predicting the outcome. Once those criteria are determined, it is difficult to alter them midstream, because changes in the polls may be ascribed to methodological adjustments rather than actual changes in the race.

There is no insidious conspiracy to rig the polls in favor of one candidate or another. The national pollsters who partner with media outlets are respected survey researchers. But turnout was higher than predicted, thanks to the mobilization efforts of interest groups and the closeness of the race. The polls could not accommodate a broader concept of who might vote, and this methodological choice had political consequences. The fact that Bush could be seen as the presumptive winner certainly is linked to the mistaken Florida second call on election night, but it was framed by a month of Bush polling ascendancy.

Anna Greenberg

Related Topics

Bureau of the Census Clinton Democratic Party Evan Bayh George W. Bush John McCain Person Career President Private Queen Reagan Republican Party

But what this newfound patriotism will mean in terms of a positive view of government and support for a progressive agenda remains to be seen. Prior to September 11, Generation Xers (born between 1964 and 1975) were the GOP's most ardent supporters, if they paid attention to politics at all. If we look at the numbers among white voters, where we find the bulk of Republicans in the electorate, we see this pattern quite clearly. According to data collected by Democracy Corps last year, 44 percent of white voters age 25 to 36 called themselves Republicans, while only 27 percent called themselves Democrats. The Democratic Party fared about the same with Generation Y (born between 1976 and 1997), with 47 percent of white voters age 18 to 24 calling themselves Republican, nearly ten points higher than white voters over 55 years of age. President Clinton handily won voters under 30 in 1996, but Democrats only break even with young voters in off-year Congressional elections. At the moment, only Generation Y's growing demographic diversity saves it from embracing the Republican Party as strongly as its immediate predecessor: According to Census Bureau projections, members of Generation Y are twice as likely as people over 55 to be either African-American or Latino.

Younger people's conservatism rests upon a strong distrust of government. The decline in trust, of course, was initiated by members of the Baby Boom generation, who experienced the disappointments of Vietnam and Watergate. But continued distrust among young Americans should not surprise anyone paying attention to the nation's dialogue about government since 1980. Both Generations X and Y were raised without national political leadership that clearly articulated a vision of government's role in creating a better society. Instead, government has been cast as the problem. Generation X heard President Reagan's attack on the federal government, personified in the "welfare queen" and other alleged abuses of government largesse, and it experienced the first President Bush's neglect of domestic responsibilities in the last, traumatic recession. Generation Y saw a more muted undermining of government, ranging from President Clinton's declaration that "the era of big government is over" to the championing of ideas that call for devolving government responsibilities to private organizations, as we see now in George W. Bush's "faith-based initiatives." Generation Y's feelings toward government and political leadership were further undermined by years of unrelenting attention to scandal in the media and popular culture.

To be fair, younger Americans accurately perceive that they do not get much positive benefit from government as it is currently configured. As Theda Skocpol argues persuasively in The Missing Middle, our current welfare state helps (though critics would say nowhere near enough) poor children, their parents and the elderly, and not too many people in between. But younger Americans do have deep concerns about issues in which government has some say. For instance, as every survey prior to September 11 showed, education is the top concern among young Americans. But rather than agonizing over vouchers, charter schools or teacher accountability, young people's educational concerns revolve around their ability to afford higher education in a climate in which a high school diploma is a route to job insecurity and poor or nonexistent health benefits. They are acutely aware that it is expensive to get the skills they need to get ahead, but in the absence of affluent parents, they do not see any place to go to for help. They certainly do not see the government as assisting in reducing their dependence on loans or alleviating their debt burdens after graduation.

A lack of interest in politics and distance from government was the context in which young people experienced the events of September 11, which raises the question, Did this national tragedy alter young people in a way that connects them back to a positive view of government and a larger progressive agenda? As many argue, Generations X and Y have not experienced such defining political events as Reconstruction after the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II, the movements of the 1960s and the Vietnam War. In those moments, the political culture experienced shifts in notions of patriotism, perceptions of the proper function of government and the role of the nation in the world. In some cases, they created or restored confidence in government and the nation, and in other cases they introduced skepticism and enduring political cleavages. Regardless, they mobilized young people into a national conversation about what it means to be a citizen of this nation, as well as the proper function and responsibilities of government.