Book Review: Is Voting for Young People?

I will be reviewing, analyzing, and critiquing the book Is Voting for Young People? by Martin P. Wattenberg. In Wattenberg's text, he asks the question "Is Voting for Young People?" beginning with the assertion that young people are voting less and less (4). Wattenberg surmises that young people are voting less because they see their vote as not mattering to politicians because politicians care about the votes of the old people; in turn leading the young to come to this same conclusion, and politicians caring less because young people simply don't vote, a vicious cycle. Young people are also voting less for a myriad of other reasons: lack of political knowledge, attitude towards civic duty, and different concerns between generations. In his conclusion the author concludes that young people are not so much voting less, but that as the more people age, the more politically active they become, and that because of this the political participation of the old, dwarfs the young, making it appear small. He also asserts that American political culture is as healthy as ever because while our polls are seeing less overall participation; our actual political activity such as volunteering is ranked among the most active in the world.

In the first two chapters Wattenberg explores the fundamental reasons why young people are less politically informed. His first argument is that they read newspapers less, and that each generation reads less and less. Wattenberg first demonstrates that in his findings, older people have picked up the habit of reading the newspaper daily which is keeping the generational numbers for daily reading relatively stable for each generation, but overall decline from the 1950's to the present. In this data he finds that the decline of daily newspaper reading is do mostly to young people in each generation not reading newspapers, and he believe this is a habit that needs to be developed and modern youth do not develop it. In my own experience, among my peer group, myself included, the newspaper was not popular in the teenage years leading up to my voting rights because when your a teenager the topics in the news hardly seem relevant to your own life when you have no money, property or responsibilities, and leaves no room to develop the habit by the time we're 18. This is also compounded by the fact that it people under 30 are less likely to read the political news sections of the paper according to the Survey Research Center (17). He then further explores the possibility that young people have a dislike of reading; citing from a 2000 U.S. General Social Survey that "Two-thirds of respondents under the age of 30 said there had been at least 50 books around their homes, compared to the 56 percent among those between the ages of 30 and 64, and 36 percent among senior citizens" (26-27). Education levels have also saw an increase since the 50's which in turn causes more Americans to have said they have read a book; however, once you remove the education factor the gap in reading between both groups becomes small. Finally, this trend continues similarly in other established democracies of the world including populations demonstrating significantly less political activity, like France, or significantly more, like Germany.

In the text, Wattenberg covers the viability of television news; concluding that news networks have a lot of potential but it goes under utilized in an America where entertainment matters and ratings are attached to entertainment. His first argument is that older people tend to watch the news more for the same reason as reading papers: habit; he then explains that he believes that older people do so because they come from an era when there were three large broadcasting networks and political shows, and water cooler shows were unavoidable.There was nothing else to watch, and young people today have grown up immersed in options to those shows, and that we find them boring and uninteresting thus they cannot provide informative knowledge to the youth. Wattenberg also explores the possibility that 24 hour news networks could provide decent knowledge to the young since it fits their modern dynamic lifestyles well. I do stream CNN when I'm at home to catch the news because they play the same segments over and over and I can catch world events without needing to tune in at a particular time, in a pattern similar to what Wattenberg has hypothesized. While the idea of 24 hour cable news has merit Wattenberg concludes that such news only tends to provide the headlines and very little good data, but to me that seems fine because another point he makes is that television news doesn't really affect the audiences vote so much as influence what they think about and changes their topic priorities according to a series of controlled laboratory experiments by Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder (32-33). Interestingly unlike with newspapers other democracies television news habits were different primarily because our networks focused on getting ratings since they were private sector and thus were more entertaining while other countries networks such as the BBC present complex and fact heavy news stories.

In his book, Wattenberg asks two important questions: Should you ask people under 30 about politics, and where did the voters go? His main points are that young people are less informed because of the reasons discussed in the first two chapters that young people do not read newspapers, and because they tend to follow entertainment more then politics on television.I think while it's obvious that young people are much less politically active now that his most relevant point is made in his conclusion "You know what you follow" (90). I think that it's most relevant because in my experience people in my age group do not follow politics and so therefore don't know it because they are uninterested in politics, or at least the same politics as older people.People don't see voting as a civic duty anymore, is something I can say I agree with because I see it in my peers, and I see an apathy toward voting, most of my peer group only cares about a few things and our politics is not one of them. This apathy seems to mostly stem from the fact that it doesn't immediately affect them. I can say that it appears to me that most of my peers do not look to the long term, so therefore, if an issue that is heard about won't have an immediate effect on them then it's really unimportant in their daily lives. The world, government, politics all moves on whether they are involved or not, so they can get away with not caring, and the rest of the world lets them. If you couple this with the general feeling of satisfaction with the way things are it becomes easy to see why they wouldn't want to invest anything into it, if it's not broke don't fix it. My peers go to work, they go to class, they spend time with their friends and girlfriend, pursue a hobby or two and do it all over again the next day and are fine with that; a war in Oman hardly touches this simple cycle. My conclusion to this line of thought is that my peers tend not to vote because it doesn't take much to satisfy them, and as one gets older his needs become more complex, prompting them to do more about it; as they age further still become simpler again and voting less thus, to borrow a page from the conservative argument, people only want change when they are unhappy, so a lack of voting is a sign of political health.

He posits that lack of voter turnout on the part of the young is a problem because politicians attempt to satisfy their core constituents; therefore, when young people do not vote it politicians do not listen, and consequently leads to the interests of our youth being underrepresented: "A government of older people, by older people, and for older people."However, is this really a relevant concern? Are young people truly underrepresented? Wattenberg's conclusion overlooks one important factor: indirect representation. A candidate seeks to secure his or her core constituents votes most through the most direct and obvious method, after all, this would be the best way to gain their support. This easily noticeable support for older age groups could drown out, with it's loud quality, the subtle support for our youth; I'm saying ,while it seems that older people are more represented by our government, that our youth have huge reservoir of indirect representation that balance things out. First, the parents, say middle aged parents; logically these people would be more inclined lend more of their support to a candidate that wants to introduce change for the better to institutions that help their children. This can easily be seen when looking at how big an issue education is for a political party; both parties are very vocal about always improving education. Education is a very sturdy plank in either parties platform, so might the young not be represented a great deal that goes unnoticed via their parents? What moreover of the concept of trusteeship? That their are people in our government, who despite making reelection their top priority, will when the occasion requires make decisions for the greater good rather then to satisfy their constituency; is it not possible we see uncounted representation for the young through them, many of which may be parents themselves? Wattenberg claims though that the fact that everyone gets older it doesn't help, I disagree the youth eventually become the old, and although they do look out for their age group they remember the problems of their youth, so they place a decent priority on fixing them which benefits the youth of the next generation. Finally, special interest groups, for special interest groups that are involved in the field of health care would it not be more in their interest to support younger groups? As people get older, their health becomes more fragile and they end up relying more upon their health care which becomes more costly. Young people are in better health and a safer investment, just consider they pay smaller dues for that very reason. Let's also consider other interest groups connected to businesses since the young tend to dominate certain consumer groups like fast food, snacks, and entertainment; a happy consumer is a consumer who buys frequently, so these groups take an interest in supporting things that are sure to make their young consumers happy and the purchases flowing. My stance on the author's opinion of how to help the problem is rather short and simple: don't. Our youth are represented fine through indirect means, and the young by Wattenberg's own admission are far less knowledgeable about politics, so I don't want them voting in our leadership. If, however, we must consider it as a problem why waste any time and effort on half-hearted measures: make voting compulsory since it's simple and effective and results in 89 to 97 turnout for citizens 18 to 29 in countries that use compulsory voting, but this also leads to the possibility of a shift in representation to the youth as they will have both direct and indirect representation (168). Finally, Wattenberg concludes that it's not so much that our youth are not involving themselves as much in politics so much that older generations are involving themselves more making the participation of the young seem smaller. This seems reasonable to me since the generation that he says developed the newspaper reading habits, and broadcasting news watching habits includes the baby boomers by and large one of our largest generations.

In conclusion, Wattenberg's arguments and evidence for the most part are spot on, much of it being a foreshadowing of what I see in my generation. I do feel though he perhaps has missed the largest point I have made, that our youth are not in danger of underrepresentation. I disagree also on it being a problem because I don't want my peers voting. My age group lacks crucial knowledge to vote people into the oh so important role of government leadership, and that's too important a job to leave to the uninformed, and especially those who would not vote to begin with. Let's not encourage it. Voting is not for young people, voting is not for old people, voting is for those who would choose to pay the high costs associated with becoming well informed.

Wattenburg, Martin P. Is Voting for Young People?. New York: Pearson Longman.