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
Limited research suggests that genetic factors may also be important. Some scholars recently argued that the decision to vote in the United States has very strong heritability, using twin studies of validated turnout in Los Angeles and self-reported turnout in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to establish that. They suggest that genetics could help to explain why parental turnout is such a strong predictor of voting in young people, and also why voting appears to be habitual. Further, they suggest, if there is an innate predisposition to vote or abstain, this would explain why past voting behavior is such a good predictor of future voter reaction.