was entering into a golden period. Although turnout in the United States suffered greatly during World War II, by the early 1950s turnout was at high historical levels. College-educated Americans were 50 percent more likely to vote than high-school graduates, and college attendance was rising dramatically. Additionally, the incidence of voting among women was increasing and the voting gap that had existed between the genders since women were granted suffrage in 1920 was steadily eroding. In that initial election in 1920, turnout among women was half that among men; by the early 1950s that gap had narrowed to 10 percentage points. Even more promising to political scholars were the signs of change in the South, where the Jim Crowe lawsùthe poll taxes, the literacy tests, and the other diverse and sundry impediments to voting that had been institutedùwere being removed (Patterson1).
Turnout did not increase past the 1950s, however. The 1960 Presidential election was a high-water mark of sorts, with turnout reaching nearly 65 percent of the voting age population (Patterson1). In the 1996 election, voter participation fell below 50 percent for the first time since 1924. That was the second lowest turnout since 1824. Even in the closely contested presidential campaign of 2000, turnout was barely over 51 percent. Turnout numbers among the youth are even starker; only 30 percent of voters aged 18-24 voted in the 1996 presidential election and a pathetic 15 percent of that age group had turned out for the mid-term elections in 1994 (Anderson). Indeed, since 18 year old voters were given the right to vote in all local, state, and federal elections in 1971, turnout among the 18-24 demographic has consistently been lower than any other age group and has generally been declining (Pinkleton and Weintraub, 319) The period between 1960 and 2000 represents the longest ebb in voter turnout in American History. It represents nothing ...