Working Paper 35: The Youth Vote 2004, With a Historical Look at Youth Voting Patterns, 1972-2004
by Mark Hugo Lopez, Emily Kirby, Jared Sagoff, and Chris Herbst
“This report presents trends in voter participation among young people from multiple data sources and discusses the different methods that are used to generate these statistics. The report shows that there are several reasonable estimates of youth turnout for any particular year; no single number is authoritative. At the same time, the report shows that all reasonable methods yield the same overall story: youth turnout declined from 1972 to 2000, with the exception of a strong surge in 1992; and youth turnout sharply rose again in 2004.”
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