Making Young Voters

John B. Holbein, D. Sunshine Hillygus

"In Making Young Voters, we provide a new framework for understanding voter turnout. Our perspective focuses on the gap between turnout intentions and turnout behaviour. While many young people want to vote and intend to do so, few follow through on these intentions because of the obstacles, distractions, and diversions that get in the way. We combine theory from diverse academic fields - including psychology, economics, education, and child development - and multiple data sources and methods to demonstrate the importance of noncognitive skills - competencies related to self-regulation, effortfulness, and interpersonal skills - for voting. Our perspective challenges existing theories of voter turnout and offers new insights for policy solutions to increase youth turnout. In light of our findings, we offer recommendations for civic education reforms and electoral reforms that will be effective at increasing youth turnout. This topic has broad interest across academic fields, policymakers, and youth advocates"--