Why Young Americans Are More Politically Engaged Than Ever!
Every time an election cycle gets close, we get to witness and hear all the popular catch phrases start to emerge. About a month before its time for campaign dollars to start pouring in, all the popular news media outlets get really serious about things like turnout rates and demographics. This makes sense. After all, in today’s techno-centric, information age, understanding how to engage specific age groups is extremely important to the success of any campaign. But there’s always one group of people the political world gets overly “excited” about whenever election season rolls around: young people.
Why?
With the exception of 2008, historically, young people tended to remain rather politically unengaged. There was a large drop in youth turnout compared to 2008 in 2010, and for some reason, youth turnout jumped above 2008 levels in 2012. Why? While theories/studies abound, I have two words: social media. Better yet, pay attention to how much time, talent, and treasure causes/campaigns put into building strong social media strategies.
At the end of the day, the political world has caught on to the fact that because of social technology, we actually have to come down to the average citizen’s level. And where is that? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat etc. So, businesses and campaign planners alike are finally beginning to pour a lot of resources into these social platforms.
The Result?
Young people are more politically informed and engaged than ever! And who do we have to thank for this?
Jeff Frazee YAL (Young Americans for Liberty)
Right now, there’s over 500 different chapters of politically informed and politically involved college students gathering from week to week around the country. Why? Because a volunteer national youth coordinator (Jeff Frazee) for Congressman Ron Paul’s presidential campaign decided to start YAL (Young Americans for Liberty) in 2008.
Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) is the largest, most active, and fastest-growing pro-liberty organization on America's college campuses. With more than 570 YAL chapters and 204,000 youth activists nationwide, YAL seeks to identify, educate, train, and mobilize young people committed to winning on principle.
Since Jeff Frazee launched YAL in 2008, this pro-liberty youth movement has flourished to over 204,000 young activists nationwide. An extremely impressive feat. in today's day and age, but YAL's founder makes the point that YAL is/was not a new beginning, but a continuation of a youth movement already brewing in this country; and with millennials making up such a large and diverse portion of our population, anyone who can mobilize younger people (especially politically) is impressive to say the least!
At the end of each day, very little will get done if we fail to inspire the next generation of liberty minded citizens to do what it takes to restore fiscal sanity, protect our national posterity, preserve essential liberty, and save the Republic. Doing so can't be relegated to a mere left, right political issue, but must be seen for what it is... a moral imperative on the part of ALL American citizens.
Compact for America is comitted to doing its part in partnering with any and all liberty minded Americans to advance the moral tenants necessary to preserve liberty in America. This desire has nothing to do with left, right partisan politics, and everything to do with our need to stand (together) on the American side of things.
This is why we encourage everyone to stop playing partisan politics, and #HelpMakeHistory.
