New Voters Project

What's New

In 2008, on 100 campuses in 17 states, the Student PIRGs' New Voters Project combined old-fashioned pavement-pounding with technology to reach the wired world of the young voter. We built on the success we had in 2004 and 2006, and we galvanized young first-time voters to get to the polls. Our work helped increase young voter turn out by more than 2 million votes this November.

How You Can Help

To find out all the ways you can get involved, volunteer or otherwise participate in the New Voters Project, please visit the Web site at www.newvotersproject.org.

Overview

Democracy is strongest when everyone participates. Yet ever since gaining the right to vote in 1972, voter turnout among young people has been significantly lower than the rest of the population. Young potential voters feel excluded, disenfranchised and cynical about the participating in the electoral process.

U.S. PIRGs New Voters Project aims to engage and inspire our nation’s young people by educating them about the voting process, training young activists of all ideological persuasions and, most importantly, aggressively registering young new voters from all walks of life. The New Voters Project is a non-partisan effort that champions no legislation or candidates. The project’s only goal is to register as many young people as possible.

This year’s youth turnout marks the third increase in turnout in 3 election cycles. In the 2008 election, 2.2 million more young people turned out to the polls.

Results

2008 Election

New Voter’s Project organizers and students employed a wide variety of old-fashioned pavement-pounding with new tech tools—from Facebook to "text out the vote" tables—to urge young people to get to the polls. In part due to our work, young voter turnout surged more than 2.2 million votes compared to 2004 levels. For the first time in 20 years, the young voter share (18- to 24-year-olds) of the electorate surpassed that of voters over 65.

2008 Primaries

In the summer of 2007, we launched our "What’s Your Plan?" campaign. We used fundraisers, town hall meetings and photo ops in the early primary states to ask the candidates to talk to young people about the issues we care about. Pairing new technology with classic organizing, we also launched big voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives across the country to show that on-the-ground efforts to reach young voters work. Across the country, we mobilized 500 volunteers in 28 states to ask the candidates about their plans on issues such as global warming, college affordability, health care and financial security. We also recruited and trained 250 "Caucus Rock Stars" in Iowa to mobilize 5,000 of their peers. In part due to our efforts, youth turnout more than doubled in the 2008 primaries.

2006 Elections

In fall 2006, the New Voters Project worked on 80 college campuses in 22 states to boost voter turnout. The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) measured the turnout increase between 2002 and 2006 in student-dense precincts where we and other partners focused our efforts. The analysis focused on a set of 36 precincts in Ohio, Connecticut, Iowa, Colorado, and Michigan and found that average turnout in those precincts increased by 157 percent over 2002. Nationally, the increase in youth voter turnout was four times the rate of the general population’s increase (4 percent for youth, 1 percent overall).

2005 Elections

The New Voters Project focused on youth voter registration and turnout in eight states in 2005. We registered more than 18,000 voters and made more than 48,000 get-out-the-vote contacts.

2004 Elections

In 2004, the New Voters Project succeeded in becoming the largest grassroots youth voter mobilization effort in this country's history. We registered over 500,000 18-to-24 year-olds to vote, and contacted more than 500,000 young registered voters during the get-out-the-vote phase of the campaign.

ISSUES