Talking ‘Bout Our Generation: Luke Russert
By Jessica Hillyard - Oct 30th, 2008 at 10:29 amSome people have discounted Luke Russert, speculating that his father’s unfortunate early death led some NBC higher-ups to offer him a job as a correspondent out of pity. Even though it’s easy to jump to such a conclusion upon seeing a privileged rookie ascend the career ladder so quickly, Russert has a particularly keen insight into our generation. In an interview with mediabistro.com, he demonstrates that he certainly has done his homework:
It seems that every election storyline is always, “young people will be coming out in record numbers,” and it never seems to happen. Do you think this year will be any different?
I do. From what I’ve seen on the ground, it certainly looks like kids will turn up in bigger numbers this year. But if you just look at the trajectory of the numbers, if we go from 2000 to 2004, there was a nine point increase in the number of kids who came out to vote. [For] the midterm elections in 2002 to 2006, there was a substantial increase as well, I believe in the range of eight to 10 points. At the primaries, 6.6 million young folks turned out to participate. So, given all of those statistics and those numbers, on paper it certainly looks like the youth vote will come this election.
That being said, no one really knows for sure. There [are] massive new voter registration numbers. If you look at the state of Virginia, there’s been since January, I think, about four or five hundred thousand people who have been registered to vote. Of those hundreds of thousands, people under 34 make up 62 percent of that new number. So if those folks come out to vote in a place like Virginia, it could really sway things. And I think they will. I mean, if they don’t come out in this election, I don’t know when they ever will come.
I definitely recommend reading the entire interview. Russert seems to have done quite the job of advocating for young people in the mainstream media, and hopefully he will continue to be a proponent for our generation through the end of the election and into the new administration.
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