ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses six indicators for predicting voter participation: voting history, education, income, absentee voting, age, and social media. Voters age eighteen to twenty-four essentially abdicate their voting power to older Americans, who both register and turn out to vote in greater numbers. A number of studies have been conducted on how to mobilize the eighteen-to twenty-five-year-olds on Election Day. Two excellent resources for targeting youth voters are George Washington University's Young Voter Mobilization Tactics booklet and Tufts University's CIRCLE. In the final days of the 2008 election, Democracy Corps conducted a tracking survey of battleground states. Newspaper, television, and radio advertising, direct mail, special events, phone banks, social media, emails, and canvassing are the most common ways to ask for a vote. There are bound to be days of bad weather when volunteers are scheduled for a canvass.
