# How did First-Time Voters vote? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [January 7, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-first-time-voters-vote/646365 "2013-01-07T17:26:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-first-time-voters-vote/646365/1 "2013-01-07T17:26:07Z")
To stop a hijack, I’m moving the discussion here from [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=677923). Here are the posts at question: > [@The Election and Data](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-election-and-data/646241/2): > > Obama got low information voters to vote for him. Nothing all that complicated about it. > [@The Election and Data](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-election-and-data/646241/19): > > Wrong. Obama underperformed among higher education and older age demographics compared to 2008 and outperformed his 2008 performance among the undereducated and young in 2012. Obama was able to turn out a startling number of first time voters, who tend to be politically detached and low information. Those are simple facts, whether you like them or not. Since these are claimed to be facts, you’d think that OMGABC would provide the numbers to back them up. He doesn’t and in fact I’m having problems trying to find any numbers on just how many first-time voters appeared in 2012 and how they split between Romney and Obama. I did find this, however, [Liberal Stealth Groups Paved Obama Win](http://www.newsmax.com/ErnestIstook/Liberal-Stealth-Groups-Obama/2012/11/16/id/464485). From [newsmax.com](http://newsmax.com), reprinted on The Heritage Foundation site. That’s why this is a talking point even though not a single actual number for this year’s election or any analysis of what states might have been affected appears. > [@](#): > > Nine million people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 did not vote this year. But by applying new voter science, Obama nudged enough replacements in key states — many who were rare or first-time voters — to give him his margin of victory (leveraged even larger by the Electoral College). > > Years of stealthy multimillion-dollar efforts paid off for America’s left in the 2008 and 2012 victories by President Barack Obama. Using new voter science to get rare and first-time voters to go to the polls, the races have changed America’s electorate — those who make the country’s decisions by showing up and voting. Can anyone provide real figures? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2013, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-first-time-voters-vote/646365/2 "2013-01-07T17:40:00Z")
Not quite what you’re looking for, but [here’s a great inside explanation](http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/508836/how-obama-used-big-data-to-rally-voters-part-1/)of how the analytics group in the Obama campaign totally outgeeked Romney. Mainly the focus was on getting the first-time voters from \*2008 \*to come out _again_. It’s a 3-part story, only Part 1 linked. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-first-time-voters-vote/646365/3 "2013-01-07T17:52:48Z")
It’s a pretty weak smear- undoubtedly, if the Republicans were winning the first-time voters, they’d be strutting that they “own the future voters” or something. Basically, it’s saying “you got more people to vote for your candidate, so… you suck!”. It’s just pathetic, butthurt, sadness. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2013, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-first-time-voters-vote/646365/4 "2013-01-07T17:53:58Z")
It’s also ridiculous because any winning candidate with a large margin of victory almost certainly won nebulous groups like “low information voters”, just by virtue of _winning_. ---
**Author:** ![Zakalwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zakalwe/32/270_2.png) [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2013, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-first-time-voters-vote/646365/5 "2013-01-07T18:39:14Z")
I thought Bill Frist retired in 2007. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-first-time-voters-vote/646365/6 "2013-01-08T06:37:51Z")
Apologize if this is off-topic. (It relates to OP, but not thread title.) > [@The Election and Data](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-election-and-data/646241/2): > > Obama got low information voters to vote for him. Nothing all that complicated about it. > [@The Election and Data](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-election-and-data/646241/8): > > Obama [won [in 2012] among Postgraduates 55 to 42](http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/11/10/opinion/marshpdf.html?ref=sunday-review)… (I realize “Postgraduate” is a VERY crude proxy for “well informed” but one copes with the stats one has, not the stats one wishes to have.) > [@The Election and Data](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-election-and-data/646241/19): > > Wrong. Obama underperformed among higher education … **compared to 2008** … It seemed quite amusing that Omg changed his claim away from “informed voters supported GOP” to “informed voter supported Dems but at a lower rate than in 2008”! 😃 I’m not sure of the reason for the decline, but the McCain-Palin ticket was quite easy to vote against. McCain didn’t seem particularly intelligent even at his peak, and was way past his consume-by date in 2008. Palin (a serious threat due to McCain’s age) seems to me to be the silliest major VP candidate ever. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-first-time-voters-vote/646365/7 "2013-01-08T17:22:26Z")
It seems to me that “first-time voters” is really two completely different groups that should be separated out in any analysis. On the one hand, you have the politically-disengaged folks who have had opportunity to vote before, but have never before taken advantage of it. While their votes count just as much as anyone else’s, winning this demographic might not be something one would brag about. And they might not be very predictive of future elections, since one might expect them to revert to mean, and go back to not voting, for the same reasons they didn’t vote before (whatever those reasons might be). On the other hand, though, you have the 18-21 year olds, who have never before had the opportunity to vote. Here, the message is that you’ve got the voters of the future, and someone who turns out to vote the first year they have the opportunity to do so is someone who’s likely to keep on turning out in future elections. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-first-time-voters-vote/646365/8 "2013-01-09T01:51:33Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > It’s a pretty weak smear- undoubtedly, if the Republicans were winning the first-time voters, they’d be strutting that they “own the future voters” or something. Basically, it’s saying “you got more people to vote for your candidate, so… you suck!”. It’s just pathetic, butthurt, sadness. The newsmax article is pretty accurate, as far as I can tell, though its tone is hilarious: how dare those liberals use _science_ to win elections and how dare them not share their methods with us! ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-first-time-voters-vote/646365/9 "2013-01-09T01:54:21Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > It seems to me that “first-time voters” is really two completely different groups that should be separated out in any analysis. On the one hand, you have the politically-disengaged folks who have had opportunity to vote before, but have never before taken advantage of it. While their votes count just as much as anyone else’s, winning this demographic might not be something one would brag about. And they might not be very predictive of future elections, since one might expect them to revert to mean, and go back to not voting, for the same reasons they didn’t vote before (whatever those reasons might be). > > On the other hand, though, you have the 18-21 year olds, who have never before had the opportunity to vote. Here, the message is that you’ve got the voters of the future, and someone who turns out to vote the first year they have the opportunity to do so is someone who’s likely to keep on turning out in future elections. That’s a good distinction. Since Obama won the youth vote pretty well, I assume he did well with your second class of new voter. For the first, people might not vote because they never did it before, or need to be asked, or think it won’t matter, or lots of other reasons. They might be engaged bur reticent, and getting them to the polls is nothing to be ashamed of.