Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
It's a bit of a catch-22. There's no denying that younger people vote in proportionally lower numbers than older citizens, but why is that? Is it because young people are more interested in alcohol, drugs, rock music, video games, etc. than civic engagement? Or is it because most political candidates don't speak to issues important to their demographic because they're too busy trying to win support from the statistically-more-likely-to-vote older citizens?
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It could just be that they don't see politics impact their lives for a variety of reasons and defer to people who would bother to vote. Ultimately not voting is an act of agreement with the outcome. I also would agree that most candidates issues would trend towards an older demographic just based on sheer numbers. 0-17 year olds don't get to vote and 18-34 is just simply much smaller a demographic in our country than 35 and up.
It's funny though that typically those that blame voter turnout on election results (seemingly always someone who supported a losing candidate or party) somehow believe that all those people who didn't bother to vote automatically share their preference for candidates and would have changed the election results had they voted. In more extreme nutbar cases those same people might take a swipe at the winning side by claiming dirty tricks prevented all those imaginary supporters from voting.