Voter registration among youth surges

The Arizona Republic reported the number of newly registered young voters has surged in Arizona this year compared to other age groups and may even outmatch the number seen in 2016, a presidential election year.

NextGen America was one of the groups registering new voters, specifically those aged 18 to 35 on college campuses around the state. Aiming to register 15,000 new young voters this year, they netted more than 21,000. But history isn't on their side — younger voters have the lowest turnout rates in Arizona.

A report from Morrison Institute for Public Policy found only 19 percent of votes cast in the 2016 election in Arizona came from Millennials, while 37 percent came from Baby Boomers, despite the fact that there are more Millennials than boomers here.

Nancy Thomas, director of the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts University, said young voters lag other age groups because of technical and motivational barriers, including the difficulty of registering to vote and things like not knowing the issues and candidates.

While the group registered more than 21,000 new young voters in Arizona, historically, less than half of those could end up voting, said Paul Bentz, senior vice president for research and strategy at Republican consulting firm HighGround.

There so far has not been a tried and true method to turn out young people, he said. Several groups, including young people and Latinos, are the sleeping giants of the Arizona electorate. If they turned out, they could determine elections.  But so far, they haven’t done so in large numbers, he said.

READ: In Arizona, an effort to register young people to vote was a success. But will it matter?