2004 Popular Vote Break Down By Age

Factual Questions
1

I am trying to prove a point* and, to do so, I need the popular vote break down (by age) for the 2004 presidential election.

After spending the last 40 minutes Googling any number of variations of “2004 Popular Vote by Age” and getting nothing, I have turned to my wise friends here. (The Google-fu force is weak within me).

This is, seemingly, easy info to find, but it is evading me like. . . well, like a lot of things in this world :smiley: .

So can anyone point me in the direction of the 2004 Popular Vote numbers, broken down by age group? Economic group would be handy too, but I’m not sure how accessible that is.
*I refuse to be wrong, damnit! :wink:

2

Since voting is done by secret ballot, I wouldn’t think that would be possible. Exit polls would be one’s only hope. try Googling for exit polls for the election you’re interested in…

3

The ballot is secret. How can anybody know who a particular age group voted for?

That said, of course you can do calculations and estimates on this question based on surveys. But you won’t find any official numbers.

You can find a very comprehensive source of data for the results of the 2004 U.S. Presidential elections here (PDF file).

4

Try the archives of the cable news stations (cnn, fox, msnbc). They usually have voter breakdown along all kinds of demographic lines.

5

While the age pyramid will vary from precinct to precinct, I doubt if you will get any meaningful figures from the actual poll results correlating those age distributions with voting. That’s even for the extremes of areas dominated by retirees, and areas diminated by college students. There may be some correlation, but I doubt if it is going to be significant enough to eliminate other possible factors, such as areas with lots of college students having higher education levels, and areas with lots of retireees having people who were financially better off, so they could afford to move to somewhere like Florida.

You might, however, get some correlation between various economic indicators, such as average income, at the county level and voting figures, and it would not surprise me if someone has published some sort of study on those lines.

6

Bah. I am 44, and I voted for *******.

7

I found Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2004 at the U.S. Census Bureau.

I think you might find good information in Table 5. Reported Voting and Registration, by Age, Sex, and Educational Attainment: November 2004

It’s got a lot of information, in separate Excel files for each age group.

8

The dataset you want is the 2004 National Election Study.

I used this (the same group, but the 2002) for a political analysis class. Unfortunately you need to be part of a participating institution to use it (my college). You can choose any of several hundred variables to tabulate and do any statistical analysis you want.

Sorry I can’t provide a link or something, but the name of the study will give you a jumping-off point. You may be able to be access some of it online.

9

Yes, it is at least partially possible.
Vote counts are recorded by precinct, and precincts have particular characteristics.

For example, in Minneapolis we have one precinct whose only residents are those in several large dorms of the University of Mn. We also have several that only senior citizen high-rise apartment buildings (or nearly so). You can look at such precincts, and extrapolate info on voting by age. But it takes fairly detailed information about the local voting precincts, and would be hard to apply nationally.

P.S. We also have one precinct in Minneapolis that is half dorms for a right-wing Bible College, and half Lutheran seniors retirement home. In Presidential years, it usually goes republican, because of the high turnout of the students. But in Primaries or off-year elections, the Bible students don’t bother to vote, so the seniors dominate, and it generally goes DFL (democratic).