Voter Turnout Shows A Significant Decrease Towards Younger Aged Voters

With a presidential election right around the corner, you are going to start seeing more and more advertisements encouraging you to vote/register to vote. When it comes to young voters, there's a stereotype that we don't go out and vote. Todays generation is very opinionated and outspoken. They show their support for social issues by taking to the internet to speak their mind, or put together a march/protest. However, when it finally comes down to making an actual change and voting a new candidate into office, younger people don't show up to vote. That raises the question: why don't young people vote? Before diving into that question, I included two graphs. One is from the 2016 presidential election and the other is from the 2018 midterm election. Both show the voter turnout of each age group.

2016 Presidential Election

2018 Midterm Election

Why don't young people vote?

Regardless of it being a presidential election or a midterm election, younger voters have a much lower turnout compared to older voters. You could come up with hundreds of reasons as to why the turnout is so low, but instead I'm just going to list a couple. One of the reasons voter turnout is so low for younger people is because they haven't had the time to become loyal to a party. Once you turn 18, voting and politics isn't the first thing to cross your mind. This is why when you ask a younger people if they're a democrat or republican, a lot of the time the answer will be "I don't know". Another reason why young people don't vote is because the method of voting is very inconvenient for people who have a lot to do throughout the day. Having class and work makes it hard to go stand in a line on a random day of the week to cast a vote. In the video below, Chris Baldini talks more about voter turnout and why so many young people don't vote.