this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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It’s because it’s really easy to take an evening off to caucus or vote if you’re retired. I have friends who are progressive who have claimed that their neoliberal boss intentionally scheduled them for caucus nights to prevent them from participating.
I caucused for Bernie in both 2016 and 2020. The Hillary supporters were gross and constantly were talking about how they could rig things so that Hillary could win even though there were CLEARLY more Sanders supporters in our precinct. When I would point out that some of what they were saying was really morally disgusting, their response was “well that’s just how the game is played, if you don’t like it then leave”. Hillary even sent out a “how to run a caucus precinct” guide that was full of misinformation. We were lucky that our precinct had 2 chairs, one a Bernie supporter that had the official guide. We ended up calling the State level officials for clarification on a bunch of stuff and they were pissed at Hillary for pulling what she did.
So what stopped the 18-29 crowd from voting for Bernie on Super Tuesday? When it was during Covid and virtual every state allowed early voting and mail in voting.
Even Texas, who allowed early voting at ANY polling station in your county including grocery stores, only saw a single digit turnout for the 18-29 group. >90% of them stayed home.
That was the care for pretty much every state on Super Tuesday. No state saw even as high as 20% turnout for the 18-29 demo. 19% was the highest. A lot of the southern states that would have really boosted Bernie only saw mid single digits.
https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/super-tuesday-2020
Yes, it's easier to vote in person when you are retired and that's frustrating. But as an explanation for why we're outvoted by the elderly, it just doesn't hold up when we look at the evidence.
Multiple states allow mail in voting for primaries. In some, this is actually more common than in person voting for example, Arizona, Colorado and Washington. For these 3, in 2020 the percentages of young (18-29) v elderly (65+) were: 17-35, 10-37, 11-35 respectively
(This gets worse when you consider that while the two populations are similar sized, the elderly are much less likely to vote Democratic in the first place so as a share of Democrat elderly vs Democrat youth, the numbers would be even worse.)
Oh, I’m not saying that young people need to vote more often. They definitely do, and that’s part of the problem. What I’m saying is that it’s not all of the problem.
That being said, in my state (Iowa) the state seems to do everything they can to get young people to not vote. And if I’m honest, that’s not just the Republicans trying to push that.
Sure but when we're being outvoted by a 2:1, sometimes 3:1 margin, that's on us.
It's sort of like voter ID laws, they matter but really, mostly on the margins.
At the end of the day, it's our future, our mess and our fault if we don't vote. Yes, it's harder but goddamn, the world burns and people die because we don't go and vote.