Turnout among the voting eligible population in 2008 was 58.7%, and turnout in 2010 was 41.7%: a population-wide midterm drop-off of 29.0%. Among voters under 30 (if turnout parallels 2010) drop-off is estimated to be 46.8% or 9.6 million--enough to decide several elections including in the Senate and the House.
Less youth are registered to vote during midterm elections (~50% versus ~60% for Presidential elections), but the greatest discrepancy between midterm and Presidential years is clearly in turnout. For Presidential elections, 4 in 5 registered youth voters actually go vote, but in midterm elections, only 1 in 2 vote:
Source: CIRCLE. "Voter Registration Among Young People in 2008."
Further:
[According to exit polls] the 2010 youth electorate was largely a subset of the 2008 electorate: 13% went to the polls for the first time, meaning that 87% of youth were repeat voters. This suggests that the 2010 election did not bring out new young voters, nor did it sustain the entire young electorate of the 2008 presidential election.
Source: CIRCLE. "The Youth Vote in 2010: Final Estimates Based on Census Data."
This suggests that it may be most effective to target midterm drop-off youth voters.
Campaigns certainly do this but growing the electorate through voter registration has long been a Democratic priority.
From personal interactions conducting voter registration among young college students, I feel the biggest need is to prompt them to plan by asking "Do you know WHERE and when you're going to vote?", rather than letting a conversation end after someone says "I'm already registered". Many people that are registered will pause and think about it (increasing voting likelihood).
Following it up by handing out a simple flier (with appropriate voting information or with a state-specific website) simplifies the whole process because few people want to hang around while you look up their polling place.
Young people are busy and mobile. After 2010, 1/3 of registered youth, who didn't vote, said that voting conflicted with their work versus 1/4 of those age 30 and older:
Measures like early voting could be instrumental in ensuring that youth have time to go to the polls and increasing their voter turnout.
Source: http://www.civicyouth.org/...
On that note, here's the state-by-state
early voting calendar organized by people at Reed College in OR.
A couple months ago a diary by akadjian reported on GOTV tactics discussed at Netroots Nation:
three things...that improve voter turnout:
Prompt to plan
Leverage positive peer pressure
Reinforce identity
Prompting to plan is straightforward and can be done at the individual level during any GOTV interaction.
But "leveraging peer pressure" probably requires broader actions by larger groups. Also, it could be extra tricky during a midterm because peer pressure should push people to consider it a high turnout election.
Online efforts could have a role. For example, Facebook was used to modestly bump voting during the 2010 midterm, but larger complementary efforts would be best. Rock The Vote of course has a mobilization effort. According to this CSPAN video from 2 months ago, Rock the Vote's upcoming mobilization efforts will say something like "by not voting you're saying that you're totally fine with how things are".
What else is going on with mobilizing youth voters? Many colleges will be active. How? And what else is happening?
Anyways, the GOTV gold standard remains door-to-door canvassing and phone-banking.
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The League of Women Voters runs a nationwide voter information website www.vote411.org, but for me in Georgia, it's outdated.
http://www.CanIVote.org is run by the State Secretary of States and redirects to each state's website. Alternatively, www.RockTheVote.com has a helpful website, but the branded element may turn off some folks.
Update:
Absentee Ballot Requests are an important way for youth to vote, depending on the state. http://www.longdistancevoter.org/...