Yesterday I worked about 16 hours at a local polling location as an election inspector. And while it was exhausting, it was well worth it, and gave me a useful perspective on what happened yesterday.
The school gym we were stationed in had two precincts that boarder each other set up in the same room. As the day went on it was easy to see two large differences between them. First, our precinct was mostly middle aged and elderly people, and the one next to us covered a large student population from Eastern Michigan University. The second was that we had a much larger turnout than they did. I didn’t get a final number, but earlier on we were getting about ten voters for every one they had.
Then, this morning when the exit polling data came in, my experience seems to be the story nation wide.
There were of course other factors in this election, but when you look at all the demographics, the one that has the biggest change was turnout based on age.
Two years ago the voter turnout among young people was very high while many elderly folks stayed home. This year, the exact opposite happened. While working yesterday at the polls, our chairperson said that two years ago, the student precinct had actually had a higher turnout than ours, but this year they didn’t come out. It’s hard to say what the outcome would have been if young voters had shown up, but it seems the Democratic losses would have been substantially smaller.
Moral of the story: Don’t wait until your old to go vote.
