I have to give a speech on the voting habits of college students. I need some evidence and some facts… any help is always appreciated 
Would the number of college students votes have changed the outcomes of any elections?
How many unregistered compared to registered college student voters are there in the US?
What influence would college students have if more voted?
Any other info/facts/help is welcome, please!
I don’t know if this will help at all, but MTV has been doing a big ‘Rock the Vote’ promotion, that is encouraging college age kids to vote in the upcoming election. They have been featuring commercials that talk about different numbers of college aged kids and how they changed the vote. You might be able to find some of their numbers on their website, or just by watching MTV incessantly (like I do 
).
College students don’t tend to have a high turnout rate. There are always some very political students on campus, but they are a minority. From what I remember from my political participation class there are several reasons:
College students are in the community temporarily. Who cares who the mayor is of a city I won’t be living in 6 months later?
College students move around a lot. Thus, it is hard to keep registration current. Some register to vote in their college town, others keep their home registration.
The nuts and bolts of political issues aren’t seen as relevant to low income, low tax rate students who aren’t homeowners. A bigger issue like Vietnam or the Iraq war might be of interest, but the new property tax? Also, if the student is registered at their home address, they are voting on a set of issues that they aren’t following as closely.
There are very few examples of college students voting as a block. In many small college towns, the students could vote together and get that new parking garage. Doesn’t seem to happen.
Oh, there have been occasions where college kids got joke candidates elected for exactly that reason. Takoma Park, MD had a Communist mayor for years, as well as a large population of University of Maryland students residing there. Coincidence?
The campus of Villanova University was (is?) Gerrymandered into four or five differerent voting districts, precisely to prevent the students from forming a voting block on issues common to us. If, for instance, we were allowed to vote in the same district, we might have been able to change the zoning laws such that all the students could legally get housing (believe it or not, this was literally not possible under the zoning laws).
Another reason is that many college students are still registered back home. I voted in absentee ballots for my home town every year at college. I was at the University of Florida - it was sad to see how the city of Gainesville stomped all over the students (ok if you consider imposing a 2am curfew or preventing local announcements from being posted on poles “stomping”, but still it pissed us off that we didn’t have a say), and yet no matter how hard the student paper tried they could NEVER get students to vote. Out of 50,000 students usually only a couple thousand would vote in the local elections.
Several of the posts here (including the OP) could be heading toward inaccuracy.
They seem to be talking about “college voters” as if they were a monolithic block, who all vote the same way. I can assure you that it isn’t so, based on years of political activity in a district containing one of the Big Ten Universities and 2 large private colleges. College students vote based on their own personal interests and background, and vary as much as any other age group.
For example, the year in college makes a difference. First-year students tend to be rather conservative (for college students); commonly said that they vote just as their parents would. (Remember that they’ve only been in school/away from their parents for 2-3 months by election time.) By their second or third year of college, that’s no longer true. In fact, you often see a deliberate distancing from their parents – they will vote the opposite of what they think their parents will vote.
And residence affects this, too. Commuter students (who still live at home) tend to stay voting like their parents longer. And on-campus (dorm) students vote differently than off-campus (apartment) students.
And their voting patterns also vary by college major: students in business, technology, medicine & law are generally more conservative than students in liberal arts, social work, etc.
And “the college vote” depends on whether you are talking about a public university, a private one, a 2-year community college, a vocational-technical college, etc. [In our district, we have both a liberal lutheran college, and the conservative bible college where Jim & Tammy Baker met. The “college vote” from these two is quite different. Often they even seem to cancel each other out!]
So while there is an overall trend for college students to be more liberal than voters in general, you need to be careful about this. It’s mostly an age-related thing; non-college people of that same age are also more liberal than voters in general. Though the more years they spend in college, the more consistently liberal they vote.
So you need to be careful in referring to “the college vote”. It can split in various ways, just like votes in general.
Also, someone mentioned that voter turnout is poor in college students. That’s true, but it’s even poorer in college-age people who aren’t in college!