First-Time Voters

IN ANY GIVEN election, there will be people who are voting for the first time. In the case of a presidential election, on average, about eight percent of the electorate is made up of first-time voters. As a group, first-time voters are people who are now eligible to vote because of age, immigrant who are voting for the first time, or others who have not yet voted in an election for whatever reason.

One of the most important issues for this group is with which party they choose to affiliate. For most people, once they connect themselves to a party they will normally continue to vote for candidates from that party. If these new voters enter the electorate at a time when there are no major defining issues, these new voters will tend to associate with the same party as their parents. However, if there is a major new issue present in the election, they may pick a different party that they feel better represents them. It takes a new issue to push these voters in a different direction and overcome the partisanship of the existing electoral base.

While only eight percent of the electorate is new in any given election on average, that percentage can be larger for one of two reasons. The first is birth rate. The birth rate is not stable over the years, so the number of possible first-time voters entering the electorate also fluctuates. In addition, not all first-time voters will join [Page 246]the electorate the first time they can vote. Only about 50 percent of the eligible young will actually vote in the first election they are eligible to vote in. This can cause a build-up in the pool of possible first-time voters who could later enter the electorate. One reason these voters do not enter the electorate is there are no stimuli to vote. The issues have not changed, or do not seem to be very pressing, so they do not vote. Then, when an important issue does come along, more of these first-time voters enter the electorate and can change the demographics of party affiliation.

Because these new voters have no experience with voting, they tend to be more easily swayed in their party affiliation. Research suggests that the more experience a voter has (the more elections they have voted in) the more likely they are to vote for the party they associate with and not be swayed by the current issues. At the same time, the issue must be significant enough to get these first-time voters out to vote. If they perceive no difference in the candidates, or if they do not believe that any of the issues will have an impact on them, they will tend to either not vote, or follow the party affiliation of their parents, if their parents voted.

Researchers have established that the electoral base tends to stay stable in its party affiliation except through the addition of first-time voters into the system. Such an influx changed voter behavior in the 1930s. This included support for Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. While normally younger first-time voters are less likely to vote, it is possible that a combination of the New Deal, Roosevelt's appeal, and the Depression spurred younger voters to vote. This moved the electorate's support from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. There was another large influx of first-time voters during the late 1960s that brought about a growth in the number of voters who registered as Independents.

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