Young Voters and War: The Iraq War as a Catalyst for Political Participation

type="main"> We investigate whether the Iraq War might be a catalyzing event for this generation, like Vietnam was for baby boomers or World War II for the “greatest generation,” through testing how opinions about the war influence patterns of political participation. Using data from an Internet-based survey of randomly sampled college students at a midwestern state university and the 2008 National Election Studies, we investigate the relationship between disapproval of Bush's handling of the Iraq War and a variety of forms of political participation, including two that are new in this generation: “friending” or joining an online political group or expressing one's political views online. We discover that young voters who expressed opposition to Bush's handling of the war in Iraq are more likely to be civically engaged. While it is too early to determine how long the effect will last or how it will change over the course of young voters’ life cycles, at least in the short term, it appears opposition to the Iraq War has catalyzed greater levels of political participation.