First-Timers Pull Through at Polls
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008It was “laziness” that kept Chris Hatley from casting his ballot in 2004, he said, as he smoked a post-vote cigarette Election Day.
“I was very cynical about politics,” Hatley, 26, said outside of his polling place in Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn. But this year he wanted “to be a part of history.”
The same desire inspired many around the city to vote this year, resulting in lines that stretched down city blocks. Young and first-time voters like Hatley said they were inspired by the gripping presidential race that led to a historic election of America’s first black president.
Turnout was high across the board on Election Day, as expected, but it is unclear how many young and first-time voters came to the polls or what impact they had on the results.
New Registration Soars
The Obama campaign targeted first-time voters, such as young people and minorities, groups that have historically stayed home on Election Day. In New York City, more than715,000 names were added to the city’s voting rolls in the past year, said Frederic Umane, a commissioner of the city’s Board of Elections.
The board received 214,000 new registrations in the first week of October. That figure included people who have recently moved to New York and may have voted in recent elections, or who have re-registered after their registration was canceled.
New voters favored Obama over McCain by 60 percent to 30 percent, according to a MySpace/Wall Street Journal poll taken a month before Election Day. Voters between ages 18 and 29 favored the Democratic candidate by the same margin, according to Gallup.
“I am unhappy with the president we have, and I feel like I can’t complain because I didn’t vote in the last election,” said Lisa Duncan, 29, an accounting student at Kingsborough College. “And this time I figured I’d give it a shot and do my part, and try to prevent this from happening again.”
Past Elections
Youth voter turnout jumped in 2004, as did overall turnout. The youth vote favored Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, but it still didn’t turn the election in his favor.
The increase in turnout among young voters in 2004 and this Election Day bucks a 30-year trend, according to a report from The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement . Since the ratification of the 26th Amendment in 1971, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, turnout among young voters in presidential elections has steadily declined, from a high of 55 percent in 1972, when Richard Nixon won, to a low of 40 percent in 2000, when George W. Bush won.
Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, which aggressively targeted the youth vote, proved a exception to this decline.
That year, Clinton appeared on the popular “Arsenio Hall Show” to perform a cover of “Heartbreak Hotel” on his saxophone and told America on MTV’s “Choose or Lose” program that if he had to do it all over again, he would have inhaled a marijuana cigarette.
Even without such schlocky performances, Obama’s appeal to the young seems almost effortless.
Campaign Efforts
Obama’s campaign has also used technology — such as signing up supporters for text message alerts, viral Internet campaigning, and YouTube videos—to mobilize supporters and has staged traditional get-out-the-vote drives in early-voting states.
Obama’s popularity among the young may bode well for the Democratic Party in future elections. A Gallup poll from Oct. 23 found that 40 percent of new voters identified themselves as Democrats, 37 percent as Independents and only 23 percent as Republicans.
“That we’re seeing more new Democrats than new Republicans is meaningful not only for this election, but for elections to come,” said Patrick Egan, an assistant professor of politics at New York University. “Fifty years from now, we may see that this cohort is still voting Democratic.”
Nearly half of all new voters were from racial or ethnic minorities according to the Gallup poll.
“I think that certainly for African-Americans, and to a lesser extent, non-whites, the idea of a black guy being president is really resonant,” Egan said. “It’s really exciting to see.”
Eighteen-year-old Anthony Norris voted for the first time on Election Day with his grandmother, Mae Norris, 71. They are both black.
“When I was in kindergarten, we never thought a black man could become President
of the United States,” Anthony Norris said.
His girlfriend, Elisabeth Morgan, 18 and Latina, said having the chance to vote for Obama inspired her to dream big.
“Maybe,” she said, “I can be president one day.”
– With Mary Stachyra and Maureen Sullivan
