Low Youth Turnout in Midterm Elections Is Blamed on Candidates

Roughly 20 percent of Americans under the age of 30 voted in Tuesday’s midterm elections, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

The turnout was in the normal range for midterm elections, but three percentage points lower than 2006. Get-out-the-vote groups blamed the decline on candidates’ failure to engage young voters.

“What we saw was not an enthusiasm gap” among young voters, said Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote, “but a leadership gap from these candidates.”

In a conference call on Wednesday with reporters, she said candidates had failed to tailor their messages to young voters and had alienated them with attack ads. Young voters, she added, are not motivated by anger in the way that Tea Party members are.

“There’s a new way of doing politics, and that’s what helped put candidates in office in 2008,” she said. “They abandoned that playbook in 2010, and I find that shocking.”