Making Young Voters

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

Voter turnout among young people is dismally low in the United States, often 20-30 percentage points lower than that of older Americans. This project evaluates potential education and electoral policies to increase youth turnout. Bridging research in political science, education, and human development, we contend that increasing youth turnout requires not only lowering registration barriers for young citizens, but also helping them to develop the skills, especially the so-called noncognitive skills, needed to follow through and overcome the obstacles and distractions that get in the way of voting. Building on an existing partnership with the Wake County Public School System, we bring together a diverse set of data sources to examine the early-life experiences, skills, motivations, and behaviors. This research will help to inform a possible reconsideration of the nature of civic education in the United States in order to facilitate a more engaged citizenry. To evaluate potential education and electoral reforms to increase youth turnout this project brings together, for the first time,large-scale student surveys exploring early-life civic attitudes and behaviors, education administrative records from secondary and post-secondary schools that trace students' formative experiences from very early in life to adolescence and beyond; a longitudinal database of state-level education and electoral policies that will allow us evaluate the effectiveness of existing policy approaches; in-school randomized-control interventions designed to increase youth registration; and public-use voter files. These combined datasets will allow for a more comprehensive and rigorous evaluation of existing civic education and electoral policies to better inform the development of new reforms to facilitate a more engaged citizenry.