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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Spin Control

Harvard poll:Most millennials could skip election

The youngest segment of American citizens are none too excited about the upcoming mid-term elections, a new survey from Harvard University says.

HeadCount, a group concerned about civic engagement, or the lack of it, by that segment -- dubbed Millennials by whoever is tasked with naming generations -- plans to do fight that by encouraging them to register and vote. Are they going to explain the responsibilities that come with citizenship and show the connection between political involvement and daily life? Well, probably, but mainly HeadCount plans to have celebrities and musicians stage concerts and use social media to send out pictures of themselves holding Register to Vote clipboards and links to websites that will sign people up. 

Because apparently nothing will drive young voters to fulfilling their civic duty like a tweet from a celeb.

Some numbers: When the Harvard Institute of Politics surveyed 3,058 millennials recently, only about one in four said they definitely planned to vote in the mid-terms. That's down from about one in three in a poll last year and 31 percent from a poll at this time before the 2010 elections. The news was worse for Democrats than Republicans. . . 

To read the rest of this item, or to comment, continue inside the blog.

 

. . . because 44 percent of those who said they voted for Mitt Romney said they definitely planned to vote, compared to only 35 percent who said they voted for Barack Obama. Conservatives were more likely to be definite about voting than liberals, men more definite than women, young whites more definite than young African Americans or Hispanics.

Obama's job approval ratings were up a bit from a survey last fall, but cynicism about government was up. About three out of five agreed with the statement "elected officials seem to be motivated by selfish reasons" and more than one in four agreed that "political involvement rarely has any tangible results." For more details from the survey, click here.

Young Democrats were more likely than young Republicans to use Google+ and Twitter, while young GOPers were bigger users of Pinterest. Facebook is used equally, and highly, by both. 

Those young citizens might get messages on those social media platforms from a wide range of musicians, comedians and other celebrities next Tuesday. HeadCount has lined up an array that includes Linkin Park, Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam, Sarah Silverman and George Lopez to send out messages. All together, the celebrities have about 500 million Facebook fans and Twitter followers.

Which is about 200 million more than the total population of the United States, for those who pay attention to things like numbers. 



Jim Camden
Jim Camden joined The Spokesman-Review in 1981 and retired in 2021. He is currently the political and state government correspondent covering Washington state.

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