Did young voters turn out in Nov. 2004 or not?

I remember hearing the day after the election that the anticipated high turnout among young voters had not materialized.
Strange, I thought -- I'd seen all the protestors and I'd read about the nationwide surge in voter registration among young people. How could there NOT be an increase in young voter participation in 2004?
Well, I guess it would take an orchestrated media campaign to create the IMPRESSION that there had not been an increase in participation among young voters.

Here's how one writer presented the right wing talking points:

"This was not the breakout year for young voters that some had anticipated.
Fewer than one in 10 voters Tuesday were 18 to 24, about the same proportion of the electorate as in 2000, exit polls indicated.
A vigorous push on college campuses by both parties and national mobilization drives had raised expectations that 2004 would be the year of the youth vote."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archi...

Here's Newsweek's interpretation of the facts:

"Turnout Letdown: What happened to the youth vote? As John Kerry moved to concede the election, young-voter organizers were bewildered by disappointing numbers. Exit polls showed that only about 10 percent of 18-to-24-year-old voters turned out this year—about the same as the 2000 presidential election—and certainly not the swing vote that had been predicted. "All we’re hearing is that young people were at the polls all day and all night long ... colleges were turning out 90 percent of the campus. Where are those young votes?" asks Adrienne Maree Brown, an organizer for the League of Independent Voters. (Newsweek corrected themselves to state that 10% of VOTERS were 18-24 years old, not that only 10% of them turned out to vote.)
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6383921/site/newsweek /


The Washington Post seemed to take a look at the actual facts:
"...many of the voter registration activists say the finger-pointing isn't fair. Since the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1972, the voting trend for those under the age of 30 has continually spiraled downward, the University of Maryland-based CIRCLE says.

Until last Tuesday.

The 2004 presidential race, as far as the youth vote was concerned, was a landmark election, bringing out nearly 21 million voters under the age of 30 to the polls, according to Peter Levine, CIRCLE's deputy director.

"This is a big, big gain," adds Thomas E. Patterson, the Bradlee professor of government and the press at Harvard University. "The Vanishing Voter," his most recent book, examines the causes and consequences of declining voter participation. "For that age group, it's the biggest turnout, in raw numbers, since 1972." "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35290-20...

The Portland State University Vanguard had this to say:
"Approximately 4.4 million new young people turned out to vote by the National PIRG's own numbers. Overall 51.6 percent of young people voted this year, compared to 42.3 percent in 2000."
http://www.dailyvanguard.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/1...

Here's another analysis:
"At least 20.9 million Americans under the age of 30 voted in 2004, an increase of 4.6 million over 2000."
http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/Release_Turnout2004.pd...

Here's a map showing what the electoral results would have been if voting had been limited to those age 29 and under:


Imagine that! Kerry winning West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Colorado and Missouri among voters age 30 and under. Imagine that...

Here's the moral: Don't believe anything they tell you, and only believe half of what you see.

That's a good compilation of info.

I think it's a Rove spin that they didn't turn out (Just like the exit polls favored Dems, the undecideds and first-time voters broke for Bush, etc.).

Check out this excellent compilation by Peace Patriot (especially the summary of Freeman's 2nd work in the post below. Up to 8 million Kerry votes are "AWOL"?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x323058#323124

Another really major "piece of the puzzle" is the Clinton Curtis allegations. This is the smoking gun that shows how votes were switched. If a program like this can be written so easily, it's not a far reach to see how votes (like the youths) could be "vaporized" as well.
http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/2005-02-10/news/news.html
<Lots more info here.>
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001176.htm
<Watch his Rep. Conyers Forum testimony here (Clinton Curtis testifying before the House Judiciary December 13, 2004, about rigging of voting machines).>
http://www.ledgeofliberty.com/2004/12/video_clinton_c.html
<Alt links, transcript, more>
http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2004/12/14/2961/
http://www.solutionassoc.com/TruthFire/blog/2004/12/clinton-curtisplay-testimony-december.html

The youth voted. It's just that their vote was "vaporized" and/or switched.