Published Feb. 8, 2011
TWISler Update: Examining the youth vote… or lack thereof
When it comes to local elections, that whole “voting†thing hasn’t always been our strong suit. We seem to have a problem getting our citizenry to exercise their civic duty whenever it comes time to elect the people that vote on the laws that directly effect our daily everyday lives. Go figure! And nobody has proven harder to get off the couch and into the voting booth than the youth of our fair city.
Just to give you an idea of the scope of our apathy, we’ll look at the turnout from 2009’s At-Large City Commission election among registered voters age 40 and under. (You might want to check out TWISler’s Breakdown of the City Commission Candidates and Districts to get the full context.) In the case of District 2, the “rich†district comprising St. Armands, Bird Key and most of the Bayfront, there were 3,176 youngsters registered and only 109 of them cast a ballot — a 3.4% showing. As for District 3, the “middle class†district spreading out east and south of downtown, 2,983 youthful voters on the rolls and only 61 showed up for a big 2% turnout. And then there’s District 1, the “poor†district housing Newtown and Rosemary, which out of it’s 3,370 voters under 40 only managed to inspire 26 of them to hit up the polls — a whopping 0.7% of registrants. (more…)Tag: Voter Turnout
-
TWISler Update: Examining the youth vote… or lack thereof
Published Feb. 8, 2011
TWISler Update: Examining the youth vote… or lack thereof
When it comes to local elections, that whole “voting†thing hasn’t always been our strong suit. We seem to have a problem getting our citizenry to exercise their civic duty whenever it comes time to elect the people that vote on the laws that directly effect our daily everyday lives. Go figure! And nobody has proven harder to get off the couch and into the voting booth than the youth of our fair city.
Just to give you an idea of the scope of our apathy, we’ll look at the turnout from 2009’s At-Large City Commission election among registered voters age 40 and under. (You might want to check out TWISler’s Breakdown of the City Commission Candidates and Districts to get the full context.) In the case of District 2, the “rich†district comprising St. Armands, Bird Key and most of the Bayfront, there were 3,176 youngsters registered and only 109 of them cast a ballot — a 3.4% showing. As for District 3, the “middle class†district spreading out east and south of downtown, 2,983 youthful voters on the rolls and only 61 showed up for a big 2% turnout. And then there’s District 1, the “poor†district housing Newtown and Rosemary, which out of it’s 3,370 voters under 40 only managed to inspire 26 of them to hit up the polls — a whopping 0.7% of registrants. (more…) -
TWISler Update: Sarasota’s Exit Poll Report Card
Published March 1, 2011
TWISler Update: Sarasota’s Exit Poll Report Card
Okey-Dokey folks, now that the TWISler has enlightened you on who us Sarasotans are as a people and how the wee tiniest tikes among us (voters aged four decades or fewer…) didn’t manage to earn a whole lot of participation points in our the last city commission battle royale. Now, my dear students, the time has come to examine our performance as a whole over the past few semesters. So sit down here, Sarasota lil’ buddy, and let us go over our report card as one big happy family. If we ever hope to become skilled in the ways of the voting lever, it’s important to look at the contests we view as worthy of lever pulling, the color of levers we prefer to pull, and why in the dickens we pull ‘em like that.
Just like any other red-blooded American voter block, we tend to get more excited about the matches with the big name fighters — the ones that have all the announcers on all the big cable news channels arguing about flag-pins and lipstick all the time. A look at the numbers shows we actually don’t do too shabby when it comes time to show up for the big games. Back in the Great General Election of 2008, a big bad 80% of our registrants stormed the polls to split our population clean in half, with our current El Presidente being denied Sarasota’s terrorist fist bump of approval by only 0.1%, or about 200 votes, making The Maverick the only republican presidential candidate in history to almost lose our city’s affection. But we kept to protocol for the U.S. Rep. Race, sending our very own conservative poster child, Mr. “Ya’ know what I mean?†Vern Buchanan, back up to Washington with 53.3% of our blessings. (more…)