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."
Voter turnout
Before the late 20th century, suffrage — the right to vote — was so limited in most nations that turnout figures have little relevance to today. One exception was the United States, which had near universal white male suffrage by 1840. The U.S. saw a steady rise in voter turnout during the century, reaching its peak in the years after the Civil War. Turnout declined from the 1890s until the 1930s, then increased again until 1960 before beginning its current long decline. In Europe, voter turnouts steadily increased from the introduction of universal suffrage before peaking in the mid-to-late 1960s, with modest declines since then. These declines have been smaller than those in the United States, and in some European countries turnouts have remained stable and even slightly increased. Globally, voter turnout has decreased by about five percentage points over the last four decades.