Top 5 Issues That Motivate Young Voters Today

By Jeanine Plant, October 23, 2006

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'Generation Y' is a huge, well-educated and passionate group of voters that will cast 30 percent of this country's votes in less than ten years. Here are the topics that most inspire them to vote.

Iraq and the economy topped the list of a September 2006 Gallup Poll as the most important problem facing Americans today. The under-30 set agrees, and according to a September 2006 report [PDF] by Young Voter Strategies (YVS), which analyzed the latest polls conducted by organizations such as the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, and Riehle-Tarrance Strategies, young voters also cited healthcare costs, gas prices, and education as their biggest concerns.

YVS's own "Young Battleground Poll," [PDF] of 650 18- to 29-year-olds revealed the same topics of concern.

Young voters are engaged with the political process in a way that we haven't seen for 20 years, and these are the issues that they most care about.

Education

Over the last ten years, tuition costs have not only outpaced inflation, but left it in the dust. At the same time, Pell Grants, the federal financial aid for lower-income students, no longer cover three-quarters of college costs as they once did in the 1970s, Tamara Draut writes, author of Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead. Today, Draut says, the maximum Pell Grant award covers just one-third of tuition. So now, on top of classes, reading, assignments, and activities, many students are in a time crunch because of the need to hold down jobs.

And for many, post-graduation life remains an uphill battle. Recent college grads not only face a tight job market, but they're also saddled with debt. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, a group associated with the U.S. Department of Education, the average newly minted college grad enters the real world with $20,000 in student-loan debt and credit card bills to boot.

Despite more and more young people matriculating in college -- according to the U.S. Census Bureau, at least 35 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds have attained a bachelor's degree or higher -- YVS says this is the first generation in history to feel less economically secure than their parents.

Jobs and the economy

Not only do prohibitively expensive college costs make it tough to get ahead, but young people are two to three times more likely than their older peers to face unemployment, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In the meantime, those who are employed may work several jobs just to stay afloat, while others deal with constant job instability in a workplace where high turnover is now the new norm and the average wage for most jobs has declined over the past 30 years.

According to the recent Demos report, "The Economic Challenges Facing Young Adults," [PDF] these days, many companies are also increasingly relying on temps, who make up 16 percent of the contingent workforce. But while many twenty-somethings temp to pay the bills, they're typically denied health insurance or pension benefits.

This unwelcoming economy is also an urgent issue for young people because of an upsurge in living expenses. Rents have shot up by more than 50 percent in the major cities around the United States within the past ten years, and oftentimes post-grads must return home to live with their parents.

Iraq

While pocketbook issues distress young people domestically, the quagmire abroad in Iraq is a major concern. Seldom is there any good news coming from the region: Reports of the growing chaos, the brewing anti-Americanism, military injustices, war profiteering and kidnappings all contribute to a high level of skepticism about the war.

Since the 2003 invasion, 2,779 U.S. soldiers have been killed and thousands more wounded, not to mention possibly as many as 600,000 Iraqis dead because of the war. And according to United for Peace and Justice, a New York-based nonpartisan anti-war group, the vast majority of the U.S. troops killed have been 18- to 29-year olds. And, they say, military recruiters have become more aggressive in their campaigns to enlist young people for the war. A stealth provision of the No Child Left Behind law, for instance, mandates that if high school students don't sign a form opting out of having their personal info sent to the military, high schools are required to forward it along. Prompted by such tacks, counter-recruiting strategies have emerged around the country. Among their arsenal: activists have started to provide counter-recruitment literature to high school students, and parents challenge the use of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Test (ASVAB) in schools.

Anti-war activists also balk at the cost of the war. MSNBC recently reported that the United States spends at least $200 million each day on Iraq. Where might that money be better spent in the United States? Well, the National Priorities Project, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit, has amassed a daunting ticker that measures the ongoing price of the war. According to its Cost of War project, 16,149,607 students could have attained four-year college scholarships to public universities. Public schools could have hired 5,773,256 extra teachers. And 2,999,562 public housing units could have been built.

Healthcare

Generation Y-ers are more likely than any other age group to lack health insurance. A 2004 Kaiser Family Foundation study found that approximately one in three young adults are uninsured, compared to one in six Americans overall. Because many young people temp or work part-time and employers don't offer healthcare, this is the reality. Part-time students are generally not eligible for school-subsidized plans. 23-year-olds are often dropped as dependents from their parent's plans. And most young workers can't afford to pay the premiums because of their paltry wages and high living expenses.

Most uninsured twenty-somethings, even those with a perfectly clean bill of health, feel the looming threat of financial disaster should some unexpected accident or illness arise. As for those who seek out medical attention, they face substantial financial barriers. In June 2006, the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social policy research organization, reported that the uninsured receive about half as much medical care as the insured. The uninsured, moreover, use fewer screening and prevention services overall, and postpone medical assistance when ill. As a result, the uninsured have higher rates of morbidity and mortality.

Gas prices and energy

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, The Pew Research Center reported in September 2005 that young people now view developing new energy sources as a more important priority than protecting the environment. Consistently bad news about the economy and energy costs had dampened the public mood and pushed many independent voters toward the Democratic Party, they found, which set the stage for substantial dissatisfaction over the spike in gas prices last spring.

In June 2006, CNN.com and Umbria Communications, a marketing research firm, studied blog postings written between March 12 through May 28, 2006 -- a period when gas prices rose by more than 50 cents per gallon -- and found that Generation Y was leading the debate on rising energy costs. According to their findings, these young people were disgruntled by how the costs were interfering with their socializing and their recreational spending, how it was cutting into their already meager salaries, and were suspicious of ExxonMobil's outrageous $8 billion profits at the time.

The coming power of young voters

During the 2004 presidential election, 18- to 24-year-olds turned out in record numbers; their voter participation was higher for that age group than at any time since the 1992 national elections ended 12 years of GOP control of the White House. Political parties are quick to jump on the bandwagon of courting young people as a critical voting bloc.

And though, during a nonpresidential election, voters of all age groups don't turn out as much, the under-30 crowd still appears to be a priority for politicians during these mid-term elections. Recent voter outreach on Facebook.com, for example, includes more than 200 campaigns with personalized profiles and a slew of friends. And on MySpace, candidates from both the Democratic and Republican party boast more than 50,000 friends.

The "Young Battleground Poll" found that a majority of young people identify themselves with the Democratic Party. Bolstered by the internet and the youth vote, this generation offers the promise of real change.