Is Voting for Young People? With a Postscript on Citizen Engagement

by Martin P. Wattenberg

This accessible, provocative, and brief book explores the reasons why the young are less and less likely to follow politics and vote in the United States, as well as in many other established democracies, and suggests ways of changing that.

Genres: Nonfiction, Political Science, Politics

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 2, 2006

About the author

A political scientist at the University of California, Irvine. He is an expert on American elections and party politics and is co-author of a popular undergraduate college text on American government, Government in America: People, Policy, and Politics, published by Pearson Longman. He is also the author of Where Have All the Voters Gone: The Decline of American Political Parties, Is Voting For Young People? and The Rise of Candidate-Centered Politics.

Reviews

[Daniel Goff]

Most of the theories and data expressed in the book are now obsolete as of the 2008 presidential election

[Sarah Davis]

May require more brain cells then most have to read and comprehend. It was an excellent book that hit a good subject.

[Victoria]

It was an alright book, i had to read it for a political science class. It was informative enough so that i got the general understanding of what Wattenberg was talking about.

[Ebster Davis]

This was a really interesting "research paper book", about the factors that contributed to low voting involvement in young people over the last thirty years. It was very thorough, fact based, and intriguing. Most importantly I felt like I learned a lot from it, and not useless crap I usually like usually like learning...habits and stuff I can actually use in my life everyday.

My personal rant here: A lot of people who reviewed the first edition of this book got offended by it, mostly because it says young people are treated by politicians as a special interest group because they only vote on publicized issues, or issues that affect them personally. I think that's really dumb because it's not saying that young people are lazy or apathetic, it says we haven't picked up the habits we need to be educated about civic issues. It's meant to be empowering: "this is how you can become informed and make a difference" type of thing...gosh!

In this edition the author has two new chapters: one about how young people demonstrate civic involvement outside of voting (volunteering, writing to congressment) about issues that matter to them. Another chapter is devoted to the 2008 and 2010 elections, which further demonstrate the "special interest" voting habits and involvement in issues that they are informed about.

[Cody Mc]

I agree with many of the points in this book. The youth of today simple do not feel political activism is apart of being a citizen. However, I do feel that the media is changing the game up a bit. Great book to really get you thinking has some great points.

[Andrew]

This was an ok book, although some of the information presented I think might not be totally right, and he make's people under 30 look like morons, which is somewhat true, but not totally true

[Lady Brainsample]

Obsolete now but had some interesting points. Writing was a bit dry. But worth the dollar I paid for it because I'm trying to catch up on my reading challenge, ha ha...

[Marie]

Chock full of statistics. Seems like it had more numbers than letters which made it difficult to keep my interests entertained.

[A L]

Very informative and well-written when I read it as a moderate pro-socialist liberal going into college but as a militant queer anarchist coming out of college I'm just like "lol don't vote."