Latest Numbers: Young Voter Turnout Up in 2008

Young voter turnout across the country rose for the third time in as many presidential election cycles, according to a new analysis by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). CIRCLE's analysis of raw turnout data found that the number of voters under 30 who showed up at the polls in 2008 increased by approximately 11 percent, while the number of older voters who cast a ballot increased by only 3 percent.

The Campaign

Since our inception 25 years ago, the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project has played a leading role in mobilizing young voters; highlighting their importance; developing and refining the techniques and technology used to reach them; and ensuring their right to cast a ballot once they appear at the polls.

In 2008, we expanded these efforts.

Our What’s Your Plan? Campaign helped inject young people and issues important to them in the spotlight early in the campaign season – more than 500 student volunteers in 28 states appeared at fundraisers, town hall meetings and stump speeches on the primary campaign trail or submitted a photo petition to ask the candidates their plans on key youth issues such as global warming; health care; financial security; and college affordability.  Ultimately, these volunteers talked directly with the presidential candidates 106 times, helping to impress upon the campaigns the importance of paying attention to young voters this election cycle.

Our new campus young voter mobilization model integrated a host of tech tools – such as texting and Facebook – with tried and true brick and mortar grassroots organizing techniques.  The effort thus reached young voters submerged in an increasingly wired world and also students unlikely to register due solely to online outreach.  

Our extensive on the ground young voter mobilization efforts on one hundred campuses in twenty states registered 118,000 young voters and established 440,000 personal voting reminders in the days before the election.

To ensure the rights of young people to vote once they arrived at the polls, our election protection program conducted aggressive outreach to local registrars to preempt Election Day problems. On November 4th , we placed a network of poll-watchers at student precincts to identify and remove student voting barriers.

From waylaying candidates in Iowa to ask their plans on global warming to texting tens of thousands of students ‘get out the vote’ reminders to monitoring polls for elections violations, the thousands of student leaders and professional organizers trained by the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project played a key role in this election to ‘make politicians pay attention to us.’