Politics is an Old Mans Game
politics
is an old man’s game and as someone who
is not
old or a man it fascinates me
granted the only first-hand experience
i’ve had with politics
is in fifth grade student council but
through my
endless fascination with politics i’ve
become
less interested in who wins and more
interested in
how they win take for example the 2016
u.s presidential election now don’t
worry i’m not dumb enough to tell you my
personal opinions on everything that
went down
but just in case you’ve been living
under a rock donald trump won
not by simple majority but by electoral
vote
but i told you we’d be focusing on the
how so let’s just ignore that for now
let’s say if you were of legal age and
registered to vote
but didn’t they marked that on a ballot
as
one vote for this i didn’t vote
candidate and you’ve got your red for
republicans and blue for democrats right
let’s say i didn’t vote was tan
in 2016 i didn’t vote would have won
in a landslide
i got this map on the obviously well
named website
brilliant maps based off of an atlas
filled with ideas just like these
ideas that no one really talks about low
voter cri
low voter turnout is an american crisis
the states has one of the lowest voter
turnouts of democracies worldwide
but no major news network is going to
pull up this map
when we talk about what happens in the
2020 election this fall
and i think it becomes even more of an
issue when i show you who actually
is voting all the way up there
the smallest chunk that’s my age range
or at least it will be in two years
and down here we have the 60 plus crowd
and thanks to data from the circle civic
engagement group
i can also show you how they voted
blue voters increased with age 6.5
percent
red voters increase 20.5
and given that trump was running under
red the republicans
i’m saying that the 60-plus crowd are
the people that won
donald trump his presidency
this is why politics is an old man’s
game
but the key is it doesn’t have to be
if you take ib psychology the first
thing they teach
you about a self-selected population is
that it isn’t necessarily representative
of the whole
i mean it makes sense it takes a certain
type of person
to willingly let people experiment on
your brains
and if you think about it the same logic
applies to voting
only the most passionate will go out on
a cold november day
and wait in line for hours just to check
a box on a ballot
but if you know anything about my age
range you know that we are
not short on opinions we are not short
on things that we’re passionate about
things that get us excited things to
yell about
141 million tweets
on only the top five policy issues that
were big in 2016.
141 million aggressively loud and
self-righteous opinions this graph
was taken from twitter’s internal data
from the first day of 2016
to the 3rd of november a full 5 days
before the votes were counted
and released on november 8 2016.
so they’ve eliminated any whiny tweets
about the results
why aren’t these people voting
my issue with this graph and why i think
you should have an issue with this graph
isn’t the trump one
love him or hate him trump’s political
influence will come and go
just like the 44 presidents before him
my issue with this graph is if 53.9
of young americans didn’t advocate for
their opinion
when it came to an issue as polarizing
as trump versus clinton
why would they advocate for themselves
when it comes to more subliminal issues
whose effects might last for the next
hundred years
why would they vote when it comes to
climate change policies
you know who is gonna vote when it comes
to climate change policies
and in 2016 when there are entire cities
underwater
and we can’t raise our children outside
because the pollution is too dangerous
for growing lungs
and we are struggling to provide a drop
of water for the lower class when my
generation is
fighting for a livable future
those people will be dead
we are laying around complaining about
how
everything in our lives are going
downhill
but we lack the agency to do anything
about it
but i’m 16. i can’t vote
why should i be standing up here talking
to you all about the power
of a democracy that i can’t even
participate in
and while we’re on it i’m sure every one
of you has little reasons why you just
didn’t manage to cast that vote
maybe you just became of age and you
don’t know how
maybe you don’t come from a politics
family maybe you had a nasty cold the
day of
i don’t know i’m not one to judge but
even over the course of this ted talk
you’ve probably had some pretty
visceral reactions towards like trump
or climate change and you’ve definitely
gotten into a fair few arguments over
or facebook or at the family dinner
table over the holidays
and to me where you stand on any of
these issues is irrelevant
i’m not trying to tell you what to think
that negates the point of democracy
and i’ve shown you a lot of graphs and
honestly none of them really matter
either
u.s politicians and twitter
and voter turnout is just a way to
represent
an endemic problem what does matter
is that we fight for the future that we
want
so badly
and if you need another example
a lot of people are going to get up on
this stage tonight
and tell you how you can make your life
better
but they’re just words
change requires action
you choose to listen
you choose to think
you choose to feel
now act thank you