Voter registration drives have flooded campuses. Student organizations advertise mass viewings of debates. College Democrats and College Republicans can be found preaching their party agendas with attempts to lure wavering students.

But experts say you can rock the vote all you want, but chances are, it won’t do a thing. Most students already have made the decision of whether to vote before they set foot on campus.

Sixty-seven percent of eligible 18- to 24-year-olds failed to vote in the 2000 general election, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. While overall voter turnout has decreased since 1972, the decline in the youth vote has been much sharper. In the 2000 election, the voter turnout of 18- to 24-year-olds was the lowest of any group by more than 10 percentage points.

For the third of eligible youth voters who did vote, experts think a host of sociological factors shaped their decision. Students’ family, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds are all deciding factors in whether they will make the choice to vote, said John Transue, an assistant professor of political science at Duke University who also does research for the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. The organization, commonly referred to as CIRCLE, studies the voting habits of 18- to-24-year-olds throughout the nation.

Family voting habits
When Elif Basar, 21, an engineering student at the University of Illinois, talks with her friends, she tries to broach the topic of politics and voting each day. But her enthusiasm, considering her background, for voting is no surprise to some experts. When her family sits down for dinner together, one topic comes up quite frequently and has for many years: politics.

I-ELECT survey results from University of Illinois students indicate that family is a leading influence on how students vote, with 13.6 percent of students ranking it as an “extremely influential” factor.

Youths whose parents vote are more likely to vote themselves, said Tom Patterson, Bradlee professor of government and media at Harvard University.

“They have no history of personal attitudes,” Patterson said. “But if they see their parents doing it, they are more likely to go out and vote themselves.”

Transue, who has conducted political psychology research for CIRCLE, explained that social networks often foster a person’s entrance into politics and the decision to vote. Family is usually a person’s first social network.

“When parents are modeling the behavior of voting, kids get the idea that that is what is normal,” Transue said. “Voting also has a strong component of habit. People who do it once tend to do it again and again, so if parents start students voting, they will tend to keep voting.”

For Elif Basar, that certainly was the case.

“I knew a lot about politics because (my family) had talked about it with me,” Basar said. “But now I can support what I think on every issue, and it’s not because my parents think so or that my parents told me. It’s my own personal decisions.”

Her parents, Tamer and Tangul Basar, both University of Illinois engineering faculty members and natives of Turkey, said voting is taken very seriously in their homeland, as not just a right, but a responsibility. They’ve ingrained into the minds of their two daughters the importance of voting.

Now, Elif Basar combs news media to educate herself about politics, the candidates and the issues they support. She said she thought voting was an important responsibility that everyone should take seriously, including students.

“I think that the people who should vote the most are often the people who don’t vote,” she said. “Voting is important because it is the way we decide who our next leader will be.”

Basar’s 25-year-old sister Gozen said she didn’t plan to vote in the last election because she didn’t identify with either party. She plans to vote in this election because she realized the impact of politics in everyday life.

“When I was in college, I had better things to be doing than learning about the candidates,” she said. “Now that I am out making my own paycheck and so much of it is being taken away by taxes, I am really looking to elect the person who will use those taxes the most efficiently.”

Religion’s role
Andi Clinard, a University of Illinois communications student, plans to vote this November because she wants to make sure the future president’s stance on issues coincides with her beliefs.

“I’m not the person to dig down and do all the research about the candidates,” Clinard said. “But I plan to vote for Bush because the opinions that flow from my faith flow from his faith, too. It’s comforting to me that the president of our country is running hard after Jesus.”

The influence of religion on voting habits is not unique to Clinard. According to the I-ELECT survey, 19 percent of students believe religion is extremely influential. However, 28.6 percent found that religion was not influential at all.

John C. Green, director of the Bliss Institute for Applied Politics at the University of Akron in Ohio, said people who were involved in religious activities were more likely to vote because of a social group effect. Those who are religious tend to talk with other people about politics, which engages them in the election process.

“It probably has to do with the salience of religion. People who think religion is important in their lives often think that it is important in all parts of their lives,” Green said. “On the other hand, there’s probably a large group of people to whom religion doesn’t matter at all, so it won’t be influential in their voting.”

Clinard describes herself as being “Christian 24 hours a day.” She studies the Bible and spends 20 hours a week meeting with a Christian organization called Campus Crusade for Christ. She feels strongly on issues such as abortion, which she believes is wrong, and wants to elect a leader who shares her beliefs.

“I feel an obligation to vote for the person who’s going to reflect my faith (when making) decisions,” she said.

Community influence

Adam Sauder, a University of Illinois engineering student, plans to vote mainly because he’s concerned about the economy.

Sauder grew up in Bettendorf, Iowa, and his parents moved to Morton, Ill., when he began college. Sauder said people in Bettendorf rarely argued about their political views. Living in Morton – and working a summer construction job – has shaped his political views.

Sauder said the economy could be revitalized by giving tax refunds to people in the upper tax brackets because they would reinvest the money and boost the economy.

Sauder said many of Morton’s wealthier residents were beginning construction projects. And he said he got more construction work when George W. Bush cut taxes. The additional work brought more money to lower-income workers, even if they were not directly affected by the tax cuts.

“The building of a home addition can employee lots of workers for several months, and that’s good for the economy,” Sauder said.

Transue, the CIRCLE researcher, said community often has an influence on people’s voting habits if the community in which they live is educated and talks about politics frequently.

Eric Garrison, a University of Illinois mathematics student, has lived the majority of his life in Batavia, Ill., a Chicago suburb. He doesn’t plan on casting a vote in November. Although Garrison doesn’t remember talking about politics in his hometown very much, but he said his background little to do with why he doesn’t vote. Voting, Garrison said, just isn’t a priority for him.

“I haven’t really had time to research both candidates,” Garrison said. “If you are too informed or fanatical about one candidate, if I was to only go out and research one candidate, my vote wouldn’t really be doing any good.”

Rob Kaineg, a University of Illinois international studies major, has lived in New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Illinois. Having lived in rural, urban and suburban environments, Kaineg thinks the diversity of his background has helped encourage him to vote.

“Living in a single-parent household and moving around a lot, I have gotten the chance to see a lot of things, and I think we can do something to change these things by voting,” Kaineg said.

Kaineg said living in Boston drove his interest because everyone talked about politics. But he said he thinks the Midwest is much more apathetic.

“Kids here are lazy bastards,” Kaineg said. “They only think about themselves and their own little world and they make excuses, like ‘Oh, I have to go all the way home (to vote).’”

Transue said that attitude could be typical of a college campus and a transplanted community.

“When you are in a community that talks about politics and trusts each other, they are more likely to vote,” he said. “However, when students get to campus, it sometimes doesn’t have much effect because moving drives voter participation down. People don’t want to have to figure out how to re-register, get an absentee ballot or find a place to vote.”