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Reaching Younger Voters

According to the U.S. census, the poll turnout of 18-24 year olds at the 2004 elections was 47% of the 58% registered voters in this age group. It was the lowest of all age groups. This does not mean, however, that the younger generation just doesn’t care. Many of them do.
I recently held a focus group with UWM students within this age demographic. The purpose of the focus group was to see how You Tube political ads affected the students, however, another issue arose. Many of the students felt like politicians are not doing enough to talk to young voters about issues that really matter to them. They brought up a few suggestions which I thought were interesting.

In order to reach the young voters and help spike up the percentages at the polls…

Politicians could:

- attend more colleges
- explain, not sell, themselves
- talk about issues, such as school tuition for example, that actually concern younger people
- stop bashing opponents for no reason, it’s not impressive

Politicians should try their best to reach the younger voters, but one student in the focus group brought up another point.

Young people should also become active in politics, coming together to make their voices heard to politicians. They should make people aware that they care.

The percentage of young voters at the polls has increased within the last two elections. Hopefully, the percentage increases even more with the upcoming election.