Voter turnout in the United States presidential elections
Recent decades have seen increasing concern over the fact that youth voting turnout is consistently lower than turnout among older generations. Several programs to increase the rates of voting among young people—such as MTV's "Rock the Vote" (founded in 1990) and the "Vote or Die" initiative (starting in 2012)—may have marginally increased turnouts of those between the ages of 18 and 25 to vote. However, the "Stanford Social Innovation Review" found no evidence of a decline in youth voter turnout. In fact, they argue that "Millennials are turning out at similar rates to the previous two generations when they face their first elections."
Student governments in the United States
Average voter turnout in all 4,700 student governments nationwide is in the range of 4 percent, according to the ASGA SG database. This number is negatively skewed by poor participation overall in SG at the more than 2,000 American community and technical colleges which have larger commuter and non-traditional populations and therefore have less emphasis on traditional student services and programs such as student government. State universities and colleges tend to have a 10-15 percent voter turnout, while private colleges tend to be 15-20 percent, but can have much higher totals, sometimes into 40 percent or higher, according to ASGA. Online voting is used by 72% of American student governments, according to ASGA's 2012 SG Elections nationwide research study.