Percentage of Iowa young voters increased by 33% according to entrance polls [View all]

[Tom Rinaldo]

Last edited Wed Feb 5, 2020, 09:18 AM - Edit history (1)

On election night I followed closely on MSNBC as Steve Kornacki gave periodic reports on the Iowa entrance polls. As he explained, those returns were coming in in waves. The first wave showed that those under 30 made up 18% of the Iowa caucus goers, I believe a 1% increase over 2016 caucus goers. Meanwhile participation from those over 65 was high, significantly higher than in 2016. But those numbers changed. By the time Kornacki was reporting the fourth wave of entrance poll returns those below the age of 30 made up 24% of those attending the Iowa caucuses. Meanwhile the percentage of those over 65 attending had dipped to slightly below those attending in 2016. While overall those over 65 remained a larger group than those below 30 (I believe making up 29% of those attending compared to 24% for those below 30) the trend line was unmistakable. Older attendance was flat or falling, youth attendance was rising.

I have looked online for detailed breakdowns of the entrance polling data but have come up empty. What I can find are some news analysis stories reporting specifically on one or another data point only. One report seemed to pull only from the first wave or entrance poll results, which is misleading in light of the further updates that came in later. If anyone can find the final raw data I would love to see it.

Live on cable, with nothing else to talk about since no returns were coming in, Steve Kornacki commented a lot on the age break downs and the significance of them. But subsequently I have not seen this looked at in depth by the news media. The next morning, on Morning Joe, Kornacki had collapsed the age groups from I believe five subsets into just two; those below 50 and those above 50. Subsets so large mask the differences in participation rates between young and old Iowa voters in 2020 compared to 2016.

But from this data it seems to me that the reason why Iowa caucus attendance was flat in 2020 compared to 2016 was not because younger voters failed to mobilize at an increasing rate. It is because older voters were not moved to participate in larger numbers. This refutes the implication that some in the media are spreading that the new voters that Sanders is counting on for victory are failing to materialize. Instead it implies that the tried and true voters that Democrats like Biden are counting on for victory are not responding with any more enthusiasm than they previously showed in 2016.