The Right to Vote

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"Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

"Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

Twenty–sixth Amendment to the Constitution
Adopted July 1, 1971

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It has been suggested that Barack Obama might not be president today if not for the unprecedented participation by young voters in 2008.

I don't know if that is true.

Let me be clear about that. I'm not talking about the part about unprecedented participation. That part is true.

What I mean is, there were many groups that voted for Obama, some of them overwhelmingly. You can't give young voters all the credit (or blame, depending upon where you stand on the political spectrum) for Obama's election.

But the 18–to–29 group (which provided 18% of the election's participants, according to exit polls) certainly was in Obama's corner, supporting him over John McCain by better than a 2–to–1 ratio.

(A recent Gallup survey suggests that the president will be hard pressed to duplicate his 2008 performance in 2012. Barely over 50% of young voters would vote to give him a second term, Gallup says.

(So I don't think a campaign strategy that relies on the youth vote is likely to succeed.)

Accounting for nearly one–fifth of the electorate is pretty good. In fact, it is much higher than normal. Typically, young voters represent closer to one–sixth or one–seventh of the total vote.

That isn't exactly the participation rate that America's senators had in mind 40 years ago Thursday when they voted 94–0 to send an amendment lowering the voting age to the states for their approval.

My guess is that most of them expected to reap electoral benefits from adding all these new voters to the total. Then, much to their dismay, many of these new voters turned out to have better things to do than stand in line to vote on Election Day.

The Senate vote was the first step toward giving suffrage to young Americans, and it turned out to be a short trip. There was virtually no opposition to the idea. The House gave its overwhelming OK two weeks later, and, within four months, enough states had voted for the amendment that President Nixon was able to sign it into law that summer.

In all of American history, no constitutional amendment has been ratified so quickly. And it has always been a disappointment to me that many young voters don't seem to appreciate what they have.

Lowering the voting age wasn't a particularly new idea. President Eisenhower was the first to propose it nearly 20 years earlier.

People of my parents' generation were fighting and dying for their country in Europe and the Pacific when they were 18, but they couldn't vote for or against the politicians whose decisions shaped the world in which they lived. Neither could the people who fought in Korea — or most of the people who fought in Vietnam.

(In fact, a popular rallying cry of the time was "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote." It was hard to argue with that logic.)

And neither could the high school girls who used to babysit my brother and me when we were little — although all that changed 40 years ago.

Even though it has been four decades since that amendment went into effect, it seems to me that young voters have been going through the kind of evolutionary development that every new voting group must experience on its way to maturity. Perhaps reality has shown them that they must vote with their heads, not their hearts.

On the other hand, the 18–to–21–year–olds who will participate in 2012 were not old enough to participate in the last presidential election.

They will enter with a clean slate. Obama will not be fighting to keep them in his column. They were not part of his electoral coalition last time. They may have helped with get–out–the–vote efforts, they may have handed out bumper stickers and buttons, but they did not vote. They were prevented from doing so by law.

This time, they will be eligible to vote, but, if Gallup is right, Obama might prefer that their participation level drops back to more typical levels.

Winning the Future

During his State of the Union address last month, Barack Obama spoke of "winning the future."

To most ears, it had a positive sound to it — even if Sarah Palin famously used the acronym WTF to describe her reaction to it (and it wasn't an abbreviation of "winning the future," either, the way that Gerald Ford's WIN in the 1970s was an acronym for "whip inflation now").

Palin, of course, is a divisive figure. When she is the topic of conversation, no one seems to be in the middle of the road. She always inspires strong feelings, either pro or con.

For that reason, I have long felt that she is not likely to be the Republicans' presidential nominee — in 2012 or, for that matter, any other year. She's kind of like Hillary Clinton. Her supporters really love her. Her detractors really hate her.

No middle ground. No room for compromise.

Palin's unfavorable ratings are just too high. To be as politically extreme as Palin and be nominated for — and go on to win — national office, you have to be likable, and she isn't. Palin may, at times, sound warm and fuzzy like Ronald Reagan, but, upon closer inspection, she comes across as cold and prickly like Pat Buchanan.

Obama is a different kind of politician, more inclusive in his words, less defiant in his actions. In 2008, I guess he always seemed to be cut more from the same cloth as the politicians who have been the traditional American leaders. He came across as someone who rose from humble beginnings — a latter–day Lincoln — and had a vision.

But, for all his talk about winning the future, Obama is not winning. He is running out of time. By this time next year, the New Hampshire primary is almost sure to be over, and the Republican front runner is likely to be anointed.

Obama is losing ground to that candidate, according to Gallup. A recent survey says Obama is running dead even with a nameless, faceless, generic Republican opponent.

At about the same time last year, when that question was asked, Obama led, 44 to 42. Now, they are tied at 45 to 45.

The big shift seems to be coming from the folks who said they were undecided. Last year, 11% of respondents said they were undecided. That number is down to 6% today, and the generic Republican picked up three times as many of the undecideds as Obama did.

When you break down the findings, it seems that Obama's support remains fairly constant among women and nonwhites, and his opposition remains equally constant among men and whites. But, while race and gender were often mentioned when Obama and Hillary Clinton were dueling for the nomination, they do not appear to be the crucial battlegrounds today.

Another component of his 2008 triumph was young voters, and Obama's popularity with them is clearly down. Young voters were unusually motivated to participate in 2008, and nearly two–thirds of them voted for the Democrat. Today, Gallup reports, barely a majority of young voters would vote to re–elect Obama.

How much of an impact will young voters have in 2012? Well, absent the kind of motivation that Obama provided three years ago — and absent an equally appealing Republican rival — my guess is that their participation rate will return to a more historically consistent level.

What may be even more worrisome for Obama is the trend among voters in the 35–to–54 age range. In 2008, Gallup says, Obama won 53% of the votes in that group. Today, only 43% say they will support his re–election.

That could be a problem for Obama because, unlike younger voters, people in that age range do tend to vote — at least in greater numbers than the young.

Voting, in fact, is something that people do more regularly as they get older. Thus, the older voters tend to be the more reliable ones. And maybe, in 2012, they will be motivated to support Obama because of his health care reform legislation (assuming it survives congressional repeal attempts).

If that proves to be the case, Obama may have the last laugh on all of us. Voters over the age of 55 only gave Obama 48% of their ballots in 2008, Gallup reports. Consequently, if health care reform is viewed favorably by older voters in 2012, a majority of them may support him for re–election.

But there is no indication that anything like that is happening. Only 43% of voters over the age of 55 support Obama against the generic Republican in 2012, Gallup says.

Poll numbers, of course, are fluid, like the approval ratings of which I wrote this week. And one thing that both should indicate is that presidents, with the "bully pulpit" of which Teddy Roosevelt spoke a century ago, have a certain amount of control over their fate — even when the midterm elections go heavily against them.

Gallup reminds its readers that, when a president is seeking re–election, the election is less a choice between two individuals as a referendum on the incumbent.

"That is not to say it won't matter whom the Republicans choose as their standard–bearer," writes Lydia Saad of Gallup, "but perhaps it matters slightly less than it would in an open election" like the one Obama won in 2008.

The voters' verdict has yet to be written, but time is short for Obama. To make a convincing case for a second term, he must preside over a clearly improving economy — and, as long as unemployment remains where it is and job creation remains as anemic as it has been, it will be hard to persuade voters that things are getting better.

You Say You Want a Revolution?

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"It could be that college students will do like they do everything else: cramming for a test, or whatever, and procrastinate."

Susan MacManus
Political scientist
University of South Florida

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In spite of a number of efforts to mobilize young voters, an article in the Orlando Sentinel hints that electoral participation by people under the age of 35 may not be as great as change-minded activists supporting Barack Obama have been hoping it will be.

Aaron Deslatte and Vicki McClure report in the Sentinel that the early voting period in Florida has drawn large numbers of blacks, older voters and Democrats.

"But voters younger than 35 — especially the college-age group that has drawn so much attention from Democrat Barack Obama's campaign — are doing what they have largely done in elections past: staying home."

The Sentinel says that, of the nearly 1.5 million people who voted in the first nine days of early voting in Florida,

• nearly one-quarter were black,


• more than half were over 55


• and more than half were Democrats.

"Young people are turning out in disproportionately low numbers," the Sentinel reports. "Though major registration efforts this year boosted their totals to nearly 25% of the total electorate, voters younger than 35 represent only 15% of early voters, making them the worst-performing demographic group in the analysis."

Political observers were encouraged earlier this year by the turnout among young voters in the primaries and caucuses that propelled Obama to his nomination. Under-performing during the casual early voting period — in which roughly one-fifth of Florida's voters have already voted, ostensibly to avoid even longer lines on Election Day — does not logically imply greater participation by young voters in this election.

Democrats have been expecting increases in participation by blacks and Democrats.

Considering the financial crisis, older voters may be up for grabs in this election, although they have tended to vote conservatively in past elections. Thus, it is harder to draw conclusions about the early turnout among those over 55.

More than 30 states allow early voting. Unlike elections past, few — if any — require voters to justify their decision to cast what once was called an "absentee" ballot.

As a result, reports Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times, voters who have made up their minds have been descending upon polling places in record numbers.

If the Sentinel's figures are representative of the rest of the nation, blacks have been energized by the presence of a black candidate on the ballot, and Democrats have been energized by conditions that favor their candidates.

Older voters may be motivated, as one voter told the New York Times, by the prospect of voting quickly.

Arthur Schuetz, 62, voted in Nevada earlier this week and told the Times, "In New Hampshire where we came from, it is not socially acceptable to do anything but go to the polls on Election Day and stand in the snow talking with all your neighbors. But here you can vote in five minutes and go home. It’s super."

But Obama and the Democrats have been depending upon increased participation among young voters to close the deal.

What will happen if young voters don't participate?