How to learn and use your institution's student voting rates

Abstract

College student political engagement levels indicate how well higher education is achieving its civic mission of developing active citizens concerned with public affairs and with addressing social problems. Voting rates are a direct measure of political engagement, and free, confidential reports of student voting rates are available to institutions from the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement. NSLVE has developed a database of 2012 and 2014 voting and college student enrollment data from over 8 million students across 900 colleges and universities in the U.S. In addition to being used to research political engagement in higher education, NSLVE is used to inform campuses about their students' voting rates through customized reports showing voting rates by age, class level, field of study, and, when available, gender and race/ethnicity. Soon NSLVE will include data from the 2016 presidential election, and comparisons across presidential elections will provide insights into changes over time in voting patterns.