Will the Youth Vote Be the Fall of America?

Are the youth of America waking up?

The term “Youth Vote” originally described voters in the 21-30 year old age bracket and was coined in the 1930′s. During the 1970′s the voting age was then changed to 18, bringing in hundreds of thousands of voters mainly fresh out of high school. Being 28, I myself fall under this category. Naturally, democrats used this to their advantage and have been working on ‘forming’ the minds of children to their liberal ideologies. Eventually, in their minds, the youth would be overwhelmingly democrat due to the brainwashing attempted in the public school systems, and it works, to some extent.

The last two elections have had very high turnout from youth voters, in which the majority of that group voted for Al Gore and Barack Obama. Looking to the future, there are studies that show that in 2015 the youth vote will make up approximately 33% of all American voters. If the trend continues, that will be a major chunk of the voting population who might end up supporting democrat candidates and ideologies. These politicians won’t have to break a sweat, or drop a dime for these votes.

Democrats have been pandering to these individuals for as long as I can remember, with promises of lower to no tuition costs for college, free money for living and food, and other types of entitlements for all. It’s no wonder that they flock to democrats who just tell them what they want to hear. If you listen to the news, it seems the youth of this nation really can’t think for themselves.

However, according to the New York Times, some of the youth vote, at least for the moment, is moving toward Mitt Romney and the Republicans. Though he still leads by a large margin, support for Obama, between the 18-24 year-old voters is half what the 25-29 year-old vote is.

I thought to myself, “why is this?  Why would support for Obama being going downhill.” After thinking back to the debate and things that I’ve seen in the past four years, I came up with two theories.

First off, maybe, just maybe these youth are realizing that they are not getting what they were promised and their eyes are finally opened to the lies of the left. They realize that the country is going to hell and the failed policies of the current administration are just flat out hurting America.

My other possible theory is that they are upset with Obama, and the Democrats, and will vote for Romney out of spite.

According to a poll, from Harvard, Obama is losing support from students, not because they’re voting for Romney, but because they aren’t going to vote at all.

According to U.S. News:

As the race hurtles into its last weeks, the youth vote is becoming less of a lock for President Obama than it was for his first White House bid. And it’s not because young people like GOP nominee Mitt Romney any more than Obama, it’s that they just might not show up at the polls this time around.

“Millennial enthusiasm is nowhere near where it was four years ago,” says Harvard Institute of Politics Director Trey Grayson.

While a new Harvard poll finds that young adults trust Obama over Romney to improve their lives 55 percent to 36 percent among “likely” voters, fewer than half of 18 to 29-years-olds said they “definitely” plan to vote at all. That number is down 19 points from 2008, when 66 percent of Millennials were registered and ready to cast ballots.

While at the same time:

Romney’s youth voters are much more likely to make it out to vote in November. Sixty-five percent of his voters said they are definitely going to make it to the polls whereas just over half of Obama’s supporters were committed to casting a ballot.

So it looks like, in my opinion, Obama is losing support out of spite. A small percentage are turning to Romney, most are just going to stay home. Romney on the other hand, is gaining support because of an emerging energized base of youth voters.

Even though it’s not a clear-cut victory for Romney with the youth, the tides are changing. It just goes to show how important our vote is to secure a victory on either side, and Republicans have not been doing enough to grab these votes. I believe that will change.  Republicans are not just a bunch of old, fat, white, rich guys. There is a young, diverse group of Republicans rising from the midst of this great country, and they will be the future of the GOP.

So will the youth vote destroy America? No, I really don’t think so. I think the destruction of America would come at the hands of a majority of the population living off government entitlements and/or a majority of the population in government employment. Both very real possibilities, but that’s a whole other topic.