Education Gap Persists: 66% of youth with any college experience turned out to vote, 35% of youth with no college experience
Previous research has shown a strong correlation between college experience and political engagement. About40 percent of young eligible voters between the age of 18 to 29 have not attended college. Our recent report,That’s Not Democracy: How Out-of-School Youth Engage in Civic Life and What Stands In Their Way, shows they are interested in participation but face a systematic lack of civic opportunities. Not being asked to participate can have detrimental effects on motivation and efficacy. Since early civic engagement can lead to engagement later in life, whether we close this gap will have a significant effect on the future of democracy.
In this new fact sheet (PDF), we describe youth participation in the 2012 election by educational attainment (Our pre-2012 analysis of youth voting by educational experience can be found here). This fact sheet is the third in a series CIRCLE is producing on the youth who voted in 2012. The first, an overview of young voters compared to older voters, can be found here. The second, is a deeper understanding of the preferences and beliefs of young voters by gender and race.
Some findings from this analysis include:
★ Although 60% of the U.S. citizens between ages of 18-29 have gone to college, 71% of the young voters had attended college, meaning that college-educated young people were overrepresented among young people who voted.
★ We estimate that 66% of eligible youth who have any college experience turned out to vote, while 35% of youth with no college experience turned out to vote.
★ Non-college youth voters were more ethnically diverse than their college educated peers. The racial and ethnic makeup of non-college voters was: 49% White, 22% Black, 24% Latino, and 4% Asian. The racial and ethnic