Among the states that had sufficiently large samples, youth turnout in 2012 was highest in Mississippi (68.1%)*, Wisconsin (58.0%). Minnesota (57.7%), and Iowa (57.1%). Voter turnout in 2012 was lowest in West Virginia (23.6%), Oklahoma (27.1%) Texas (29.6%), and Arkansas (30.4%). In every state except Mississippi, voter turnout among those age 30 and above was at least 10 percentage points higher than turnout among 18-to-29 year-olds. You can find more state by state information in our fact sheet “The Youth Vote in 2012.”

In 2012, youth voter turnout was highest in battleground states, regardless of political party affiliation. In general, competition among candidates and parties raises youth turnout.

*Note that although state samples are large enough to meet standard criteria of reliability in the social sciences, all CPS estimates are subject to sampling  and non-response errors and the estimates come with margins of error.  For example, Mississippi’s youth turnout rate of 68.1% is an outlier compared to past results for that state and region and compared to older Mississippians’ voting rates. Individual state results should be viewed with caution and put in context.

** State’s with “0%” in the state map have insufficient sample size and statistic is not reported by CPS.

The fact sheet that we are releasing today goes into more depth about the differences in how young women and men participated in the 2012 election. We report voter turnout, candidate choice, party ID, and self-reported political ideology by gender and by several intersecting demographics (race and ethnicity, education, and marital status).

Major findings include:

• In 2012 the turnout rate among single young men was 41.1%, compared to a 48.3% turnout rate among young single females.  In 2012, nearly 52.5% of young married females voted compared to 46.5% of married men.

• Despite the turnout decline among all young women, African-American young women continued to vote at the highest rate among young voters in 2012. Young African-American women had the highest turnout of any gender and racial or ethnic group of young people (the next highest group was White women at 48.7% and then young African-American men at 46.4%).

• Consistent with trends observed for all young people, young women with higher levels of education are more likely to vote. Between 2008 and 2012, the gap in turnout between young women with less than a high school diploma and young women who have completed college remained consistent, with a 44 percentage point difference in turnout.

• Similar to 2008, young (18-24) women in college were more likely to vote than young men in college (56.1% compared to 48.4%, respectively).

• In 2008, young women – regardless of employment – voted at higher rates than young men. In 2012, however, young men who were employed and young women who were unemployed voted at the same rate (46.2%).

• Young women voters were more supportive of President Obama than their male counterparts of the same race. Young male voters tended to be more conservative and less supportive of President Obama, but to varying degrees. In 2012, young women were more liberal and Democratic than their young male counterparts. Young Latinas were the most likely to identify as liberal among all groups and young White women most likely to identify as conservative. Young White men were the most likely to identify as Republican (37%, though young White women were close behind at 35%) and young Black women were the most likely to identify as Democratic.

For more analysis of the intersection of youth, gender and race and ethnicity, please see our post-election fact sheet.

Immediately after the 2012 election, CIRCLE released our own estimates of the turnout rate: 50% for ages 18-29 and 48% for ages 18-24. We used the following method to reach those estimates: multiplying the number of ballots officially counted by that date by the proportion of voters who were young (according to the National Exit Polls) and then dividing that result by the number of young citizens (from Census data). In previous elections going back to the origins of the modern exit polls in the late 1990s, this method had always closely tracked the results of CPS turnout estimates. The discrepancy is a new phenomenon in 2012.

Like other organizations that study voting, we will now switch to using the CPS, which provides the largest sample sizes and the longest and most consistent historical trends. That means that we now presume that youth turnout fell significantly in 2012.

It is important to note, however, that all estimates of youth turnout are subject to bias and error. The Census CPS is a survey of a random sample of Americans, conducted shortly after the election. This year, it suggests that 133 million Americans voted. Counts of the actual number of ballots cast in 2012 vary, but no one has estimated more than 129 million votes. If the people who are contacted for the CPS and agree to participate do not precisely represent the public, the sample may be skewed. Although the sample size is large, there can still be a systematic bias–and the bias can be different for particular demographic groups, such as young adults. Also, respondents may claim that they voted when they did not. They may even accurately recall voting, but if their ballots were not counted, there would be a discrepancy between the CPS turnout estimates and the number of votes.

CIRCLE’s method that uses the Exit Polls has several compensating advantages. It is much faster than the CPS, yielding an estimate as soon as most ballots have been cast. It does not rely on self-reports of voting, because everyone in the Exit Poll actually voted. However, the Exit Polls use a complex sampling method whose main purpose is not to estimate the ages of voters. If the Exit Polls report an inaccurate proportion of young voters, that would introduce error in our turnout estimates.

Therefore, CIRCLE’s analysis of the 2012 election will henceforth be based on the CPS, and our previous releases on the 2012 election are now superseded. But we remind readers that the CPS also yields an estimate of youth turnout that is subject to error.

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MA – With this week’s release of the Census Current Population Survey November Supplement, or CPS, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) today published final estimates of how young people voted in the 2012 election. Please see this new fact sheet for detailed results.

Using the CPS turnout data and National Election Pools exit poll statistics, CIRCLE exclusively estimates that approximately 14.8 million voters under 30 cast their votes for Barack Obama in 2008. Only about 12.3 million young voters chose Obama in 2012 — a drop of close to 2.5 million votes. Obama received about 3.7 million fewer total votes from all age groups in 2012 than he had in 2008. Voter turnout in 2012 was 45% for people between the ages of 18-29, down from 51% in 2008.

Today, CIRCLE released a new fact sheet, “The Youth Vote in 2012,” which analyzes CPS data to present a detailed portrait of young adults’ turnout over time and in the last election. Among the findings:

• Young Women Have Become More Likely to Vote than Young Men: Although in the 1972 general election, men and women were equally likely to go to the polls, over the past thirty years, a gap has emerged in presidential election turnout. By 1992, 54 percent of women ages 18-29 voted while only 50 percent of men did so. In 2012, the gender gap in turnout was 7.1 points (with women ahead).
• 2012 Youth Voter Turnout Highest in Battleground States, Regardless of Whether they Leaned Democratic or Republican: In general, competition among candidates and parties raises youth turnout. Turnout amongst young voters was higher in competitive (“battleground”) states in 2012 than in other states.
• Participation of Young African Americans was Strong in 2012: African American youth turnout was 53.7% for 18-29s in 2012, much higher than the average rate for young Americans and indeed higher than the rate posted by young White people in almost all elections between 1976 and 2012. However, African American youth turnout was down by 4.5 percentage points compared to the record-setting rate in 2008.

CIRCLE’s fact sheet, “The Youth Vote in 2012,” which also contains state-by-state voter turnout data, can be viewed in its entirety here.

Later this year, CIRCLE, with support from the Spencer Foundation, the S.D. Bechtel, Jr., Foundation, the McCormick Foundation, the Youth Engagement Fund, and the Chicago Community Trusts, will release the findings of its blue-ribbon Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge. The Commission will consider the data released today, as well as other research on the 2012 election, to develop its recommendations on how to enhance young people’s informed voting for future elections.

The new fact sheet we are posting today summarizes past research and new CIRCLE findings related to civic and political engagement among girls and women. We first identify gaps that explain gender disparities in leadership and then suggest practices that may be especially relevant for promoting political leadership among girls and women. A summary of the fact sheet is in a web presentation (a Prezi) is below.

Our previous post summarized a series of gaps between women, particularly young women, and men. These include gaps in expectations, confidence, and interest. We also note large differences among women of diverse racial and economic backgrounds. These gaps are explained more extensively in this new fact sheet.

For example, the graph below shows an expanding gender gap among college students in confidence in their own leadership skills. Young men are significantly more likely in their senior year to think highly of their own leadership skills, even though young women are more likely to be civically engaged.

Another example from the fact sheet is the graph below, which shows several indicators of civic participation among young White women and young women of color. Young White women are more likely to have participated in every measured indicators of engagement than young women of color. These differences in engagement raise significant concerns about access to opportunities, skill development and encouragement and confidence to take leadership roles.

The fact sheet also suggests implications from the data:

• Strategies to reduce the gender gap in political leadership should begin to reach girls before college age.
• Since young women do participate in community work, they need instrumental support, encouragement, and mentoring to become political leaders who can change laws, policies, or systems to benefit more people.
• More research is needed on women and girls’ civic engagement, such as how girls and boys perceive civics instruction in early grades and whether and how much gender-specific instruction (e.g., learning about female political leaders) and programs (e.g., Girl Scouts) affect girls’ motivation, perceived ability, and desire to pursue careers as elected officials.
• Research and practice should continue to focus on the large race and class disparities among women in both civic engagement and political representation.

A web presentation of the research in this fact sheet:

The full analysis can be found here. CIRCLE’s past research looking at gender and its intersections are listed here. Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.

Girls and young women are ahead of their male counterparts on many indicators of civic engagement, including volunteering, membership in community associations, and voting.  Since 1992, for instance, young women have been more likely to vote in Presidential and Midterm Elections than young men.

However, despite higher levels of civic engagement, women are less likely to be political leaders (Rutgers). This could be for several reasons, as examined by CIRCLE Lead Researcher Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, at the White House.

Stay connected to CIRCLE this week for a new fact sheet on women, civic engagement and political leadership. Below are other CIRCLE resources related to gender and civic engagement among young people.

Below are analysis on how gender intersects with other demographic factors and civic engagement behaviors:

• Diverse Electorate: A deeper look into the Millennial Vote (2012)
• Do Gender and Ethnicity Affect Civic Engagement and Academic Progress? (2007)
• Analysis on Marital Status and Gender (2005)

Civic and Political Behaviors by Gender:

• Electoral Indicators: Voter Turnout Among Young Women and Men in the 2008 Presidential Election (2010)
• Electoral Indicators: Voter Registration Among Young People in 2008 (2010)
• Electoral Indicators: Young Voters in the 2008 Presidential Election (2008)
• Civic, Electoral, Political Indicators: Civic Engagement Among Young Men and Women (2007)
• Volunteering Indicators: Volunteering Among Young People (2007 – includes gender breakdowns)

It is important to create a pipeline for girls and young women to political leadership, because many are already engaged in community problem-solving and service, but they are not nearly as likely to see formal leadership roles.

Just decades ago American women and girls suffered from grave inequity access to education and workplace.  This narrative has shifted a lot thanks to tireless advocacy and activism of many people.  Now, women have achieved parity or near parity in many sectors and girls are ahead of boys in many academic subjects and college completion rates.

Girls and young women are also committed civic actors and are ahead of their male counterparts on many indicators of civic engagement, including volunteering, membership in community associations, and voting.  Female college students are far more likely to spend large number of hours on volunteer service, take service learning courses, and value helping others in need more strongly than male students.  After college, women are overrepresented in intensive service programs like AmeriCorps and Teach for America.  The National Assessment of Educational Progress Civics test results indicate that girls perform as well as, if not better than, boys on civic knowledge tests.

Yet, research by the Center for American Women and Politics and others makes it clear that women are grossly underrepresented among our elected officials. We also find the same pattern of high achievement and underrepresentation in leadership in business, law, and higher education.  On one hand, we have girls and women who are high civic achievers and yet, young girls are still growing up seeing few faces like theirs among our leaders today.

We identify five relevant gaps that may contribute to the gender leadership gap:

1.  Interest Gap

Young women are much less interested in become engaged through politics than men.  The gender gap in discussion of political issues is actually expanding.

2.  Confidence Gap

Women are far less likely to claim personal characteristics such leadership and public speaking skills, competitiveness, social skills and popularity, all of which are the very qualities we want in our political leaders.   The gender gaps have not narrowed since the 1960s.

3.  Expectations Gap

Young college women are less likely to have ever been encouraged to run for an political office by pretty much everyone in their lives, including parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, and even friends.  Interestingly, women are just as likely to be encouraged to run for student government positions as men.  In a way, women are expected to lead to a certain level, but not at a highest level.

4.  Race and Class Gaps

Women of color and women who are socioeconomically disadvantaged are left far behind their White and economically advantaged counterparts in most indicators of civic participation. Ignoring these race and class gaps can mask important challenges we have.  When we simply compare genders without considering their racial backgrounds, there are little gender differences in most of the comparisons.

5.  Assessment Gap

We currently rely on standardized tests for assessment of civic competency in K-12 grades but standardized tests are designed to measure factual knowledge, but not civic motivation or  leadership and collaboration skills.  Thus, simply increasing the amount of testing and holding schools accountable for civic learning, based solely on civics test is not likely to help us understand why there is gender leadership gap or measure the progress we make to close it.

Promoting Best Practice and Future Agenda

Ten years ago, The Civic Mission of Schools challenged k-12 institutions to better prepare students and identified six promising practices[i] and our colleagues have made much progress then, both in understanding what works, and in creating innovative ways to acquire civic knowledge, skills and dispositions.  Recently, a useful report from Education Commission of the States described various practices of “New Civics.”

In this newer framing of civics, students not only gain knowledge about the structure and function of the government and how laws are made from textbook, they can also approach these important topics using alternative methods, such as community-based projects, games, and live simulations.

Students are also known to develop into civically and politically engaged young adults when they discuss current events, particularly when issues are relevant to young people, and even controversial.  Through these occasions, students can not only learn about issues but also practice how to disagree, argue their points, and compromise at times.

Leaders of civic learning from all sectors are calling for renewed focus on civic learning in K-12 schools, colleges and universities, and in the communities.  A Crucible Moment, a landmark report by Department of Education and Association for American Colleges and Universities calls on colleges and universities to reclaim the civic mission of colleges and universities, and challenge us to expand our traditional concept of college-level civic education to include far more than civic knowledge, but include self-understanding, readiness for action, and understanding of diverse context.  The U.S. Department of Education shows strong commitment to civic learning for young people of all backgrounds by laying out a roadmap for action in a recent report.[ii] While it is critical that we educate all young people to become civically and politically engaged, we must continue to address the between- and within-gender gaps, so that American men and women of all backgrounds have equal voice in our political leadership in the future.  Our findings make it clear that we have much to improve.

In this new fact sheet, we explore who had access to three of the promising practices, whether these instructional practices were associated with higher NAEP Civics scores, and whether the effects of these practices varied for different demographic groups.

Significance

This new fact sheet addresses two important questions for civic education:

• Do discussion, debate, and simulations boost NAEP scores? If they do, that is a strong argument for using these approaches. If they do not, educators may face a tradeoff between teaching the concepts tested on the NAEP and using interactive civics pedagogy for other purposes, such as to teach deliberation skills and current events,
• Who gets these experiences?

The NAEP Civics assessment only measures certain kinds of knowledge: predominantly, abstract knowledge about perennial features of the US political system. The promising practices recommended by the Civic Mission of Schools have additional major objectives, such as teaching current events deliberation and collaboration. Furthermore, the NAEP’s criteria for “proficiency” are somewhat arbitrary (see this CIRCLE Fact Sheet for more details). However, the NAEP Civics is a well-validated and widely cited test of civic knowledge, given to a representative sample of over 26,000 students. The test is administered every three to four years, and latest assessment occurred in 2010.

Findings

At the 8^th grade and 12^th grade level, White students and students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds received more of the promising practices.

Exposure to these practices was associated with higher NAEP scores for all groups. The overall trend is that all groups benefitted at least to some degree from the promising practices.

Unfortunately, exposure to promising practices did not reduce the race- and class-related achievement gaps in NAEP Civics performance. In most cases, advantaged students appeared to gain more than less advantaged students did from receiving these experiences. That means that if these practices were offered to all students, gaps in NAEP civics scores would actually grow.

At the 4^th grade level, the promising practices were associated with lower NAEP scores, raising questions that require further research. The 4^th grade students may not report the pedagogies they have experienced accurately, or elementary-grade teachers (with very limited time to teach civics) may face a tradeoff between teaching facts about civics and providing opportunities for  dialogues about current events and simulations of civic practices in class.

Summary/Implications

• Middle- and high-school students of various backgrounds benefitted from receiving promising practices.
• Uneven distribution of promising practices across the economic and racial spectrum continues to be problem, as these practices benefitted students from all backgrounds.
• The practices did not have a clear benefit for 4^th graders, and there is no evidence that disadvantaged 4^th graders were less likely to receive promising practices, a finding that calls for more research.
• Civic achievement gaps were generally larger when students were exposed to the highest dosage of promising practices.

Future research should explore why less advantaged students did not gain as much from the recommended practices, at least if the outcomes are civics knowledge scores rather than motivations and skills, which are unmeasured by the NAEP.  The disadvantaged students did benefit, so this finding does not provide a reason to reduce the promising practices in classrooms that serve them. However, it may be that closing chronic gaps in civic engagement will require more than just providing good pedagogy in civics classrooms. Professional development and other support for teachers, culturally appropriate materials and examples, and opportunities to learn and practice civics outside the classroom may also be necessary.

Much more detail can be found in the fact sheet, including effect-size analysis, percentile ranks, and results for additional demographic groups. Supplemental tables with additional frequency data can be found here.

In the 2012 presidential election, youth turnout was roughly the same as it had been in 2008 (50% in 2012 and 52% in 2008). Youth voter turnout was lower in 2010 (24%), but that was consistent with average midterm turnout rates for youth.

There are many potential explanations for why turnout is lower for all age groups in midterm elections, including the dearth of competitive congressional campaigns, a reduction in the quantity of major media coverage, and the lack of high-profile presidential campaigns that organize giant field operations every four years.  As turnout among youth in presidential elections has risen, midterm turnout has remained constant, and thus the difference has grown.

Since research shows that outreach and providing information to youth is related to turnout, it would be helpful to know how many midterm campaigns have had youth outreach strategies, how many youth were contacted by campaigns in midterm years, and how much funding went to youth mobilization organizations in those years. These data are not available.

Differences in Registration

We do have some data that allow us to compare the 2008 and 2010 election, to understand more about differences in registration and turnout among youth. For example, there is a large difference in voter registration in presidential election years compared to midterm years. In 2008, 61% of 18-29 year-olds were registered to vote, compared to 49% in 2010.

Youth who were not registered to vote gave somewhat different answers to survey questions in 2008 and 2010. More youth said they were not interested or engaged in the 2010 election, compared to 2008, but in 2008, a higher proportion of the non-voters explained that they had missed the registration deadline. It’s important to note that the percentage of those 30 and older who were “not interested in the election or not involved in politics” was the same as the proportion of 18-29’s in 2008.

Youth who did register to vote were considerably more likely to vote. Among youth registered in 2008, 84% cast a ballot. This held true for youth sub-groups that have historically lower turnout rates. Fewer youth registered in midterm years, and a higher proportion of youth who were registered did not turn out. In our 2010 analysis, we identified a “cluster” of youth – 14% of the youth population – who were undermobilized. They had a 100% registration rate but did not vote.

Reasons for Not Voting

In response to survey questions, more youth said in 2010 that they were “too busy,” had “conflicting work,” or “forgot to vote.”   The larger numbers in 2010 could be a function of an objective lack of time or a sign that voting was a low priority for them for one reason or another, such as they were not engaged enough in the election to remember or make the plans to vote.

The data above seem to point to unsurprising reasons why youth turned out less in the 2010 midterm elections:

• Less interest in (or less outreach from) campaigns, and
• A lack of planning to cast a vote or a lack of information

In addition, large numbers of youth did not know where or how to register, missed the deadline to register, or did not have access to the right information to solve registration problems or vote when out of town or away from home.