http://pewresearch.org/pubs/813/gen-dems

 

 

Gen Dems: The Party's Advantage Among Young Voters Widens

by Scott Keeter, Director Survey Research, Juliana Horowitz, Reasearch Associate and Alec Tyson, Research Assistant, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
April 28, 2008


Trends in the opinions of America's youngest voters are often a barometer of shifting political winds. And that appears to be the case in 2008. The current generation of young voters, who came of age during the George W. Bush years, is leading the way in giving the Democrats a wide advantage in party identification, just as the previous generation of young people who grew up in the Reagan years -- Generation X -- fueled the Republican surge of the mid-1990's.

In surveys conducted between October 2007 and March 2008, 58% of voters under age 30 identified or leaned toward the Democratic Party, compared with 33% who identified or leaned toward the GOP. The Democratic Party's current lead in party identification among young voters has more than doubled since the 2004 campaign, from 11 points to 25 points.

In fact, the Democrats' advantage among the young is now so broad-based that younger men as well as younger women favor the Democrats over the GOP -- making their age category the only one in the electorate in which men are significantly more inclined to self-identify as Democrats rather than as Republicans. Use the interactive tool to track generational differences in party affiliation over time.

While more women voters in every age group affiliate with the Democratic Party rather than the GOP, the gap is particularly striking among young women voters; more than twice as many women voters under age 30 identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party as favor the Republican Party (63% vs. 28%).

This analysis is part of a series of reports on changes in the balance of party identification in the electorate. On March 20, the Center released breakdown of trends in party identification in Republican "red" states, Democratic "blue" states, and politically contested swing states.1


A Shift Since 2004

Since 2004, identification with the Democratic Party has increased across all age groups. Four years ago, 47% of all voters identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 44% identified with or leaned toward the GOP. In surveys from October through March, Democrats held a 13-point party identification advantage (51% to 38%).

Perhaps the most striking change since 2004 has come among voters born between 1956 and 1976 -- the members of Generation X and the later Baby Boomers. People in this age group tended to be more Republican during the 1990s, and the GOP still maintained a slight edge in partisan affiliation among Gen X and the late boomers in 2004 (47% identified with or leaned toward the GOP while 44% described themselves as Democrats or leaned Democratic).

Currently, 51% of voters in this age group affiliate with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic compared with 39% who describe themselves as Republicans or lean toward the GOP. Thus voters in Gen X and the latter part of the Baby Boom -- the most Republican age cohort four years ago -- now are about as Democratic as are older age groups, the early Baby Boomers and the so-called Silent Generation.

Still, the youngest voters -- the members of Generation Y, born in 1977 or later -- continue to stand out as the most Democratic age group. The Democrats' identification advantage among Gen Y voters, which was 13 points in 2004 (52% to 39%) has nearly doubled in the current presidential campaign to 24 points.


1992: When Gen X Came of Age

The Democratic Party has not always held an edge among the young. In 1992, young voters divided their partisan loyalties roughly evenly (46% Democratic, 47% Republican). By 1996, young voters were more Democratic than Republican, and the Democratic advantage increased slightly in 2000 and 2004.

Age differences in party affiliation are a result of a variety of influences, including the circumstances of individuals at different points in the life cycle as well as generational differences that reflect the political climate at the time when individuals were forming their political identity and loyalties. As the data from 1992 clearly show, young people are not necessarily more liberal or Democratic by virtue of their age alone.

The youngest voters in 1992 -- the members of Generation X -- were more Republican than most other age groups, in part reflecting the fact that they had come of age politically during a time in which conservative ideas were ascendant and the presidency was held by a popular Republican, Ronald Reagan.

In addition, those in the latter half of the Baby Boom generation, who were in their late 20s to mid-30s in 1992, also were more Republican than average; many of these individuals developed their political leanings in the late 1970s, during the troubled presidency of Jimmy Carter. By contrast, older Baby Boomers, who came of age politically during the turbulent and unpopular presidency of Richard Nixon, were more Democratic than most other age groups. Among older Americans in 1992, most of those then in their 50s -- also known as the "Silent" generation -- had come of age during the Eisenhower administration. Those ages 60 and older reached adulthood during the Democratic presidencies of Harry Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Much of this generation is known as the "Greatest Generation," in honor of the sacrifices many made during World War II.


Gender and Young Voters

Since 1992, the Democratic Party has had a sizable advantage in partisan affiliation among women. But women voters now identify with the Democratic Party in greater numbers than in the past -- and the trend is particularly dramatic among younger women voters.

Fully 56% of women identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with 33% who identify or lean toward the GOP. Since 2004, the Democrats' lead in party affiliation among women has doubled (from 11 points to 22 points).

The overall gender gap in party affiliation has not increased since 2004, as male voters have also become somewhat more Democratic. Currently, the Democrats hold a slight 46%-43% edge among men voters; in 2004, somewhat more male voters were affiliated with or leaned toward the Republican Party than the Democratic Party (by 48% to 43%).

As is the case among all women voters, the Democratic advantage among young female voters has almost doubled since 2004. Four years ago, just over half of women under age 30 identified as Democrats (54%) and 36% identified as Republicans, an 18-point advantage. Today, Democrats hold a 35-point advantage, with more than six-in-ten women in this age group calling themselves Democrats (63%) and just 28% calling themselves Republicans.

The balance of party identification has also shifted dramatically among men ages 18-29. The Democratic Party now holds a 14-point advantage among this group (52% vs. 38%). This is a reversal from 1992, when 52% of men under age 30 called themselves Republicans and 42% called themselves Democrats. The gender gap in party affiliation among young voters has remained relatively stable since the 1992 election cycle and is consistent with the gap seen in the electorate as a whole.


Comparing Younger & Older Voters

More broadly, many of the demographic patterns evident in party identification among older voters also are seen in voters under age 30. For example, comparably large proportions of African Americans and liberals -- whether ages 30 and older, or younger than age 30 -- identify as Democrats.

In addition, roughly six-in-ten conservatives and white evangelical Protestants in both the older and younger age groups identify with the GOP.

However, there are notable differences by region in party affiliation between younger and older voters. For instance, young voters in the Midwest are almost twice as likely to identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party (61%-32%). Among voters ages 30 and older in the Midwest, the Democrats hold a much narrower lead (49% to 39%). In the South, by contrast, there are smaller differences between older and younger voters.

In addition, higher proportions of voters under age 30 living in urban and suburban areas affiliate with the Democratic Party, compared with voters ages 30 and older in those communities. By contrast, there are virtually no age differences in party identification among young and older voters in rural areas.

The Democratic Party also holds a much greater advantage among younger voters with some college education than among voters ages 30 and older with some college. However, it is important to note that younger people with some college are fundamentally different from older people of similar education level. Among the younger group, "some college," includes many who are still in college. Among the older age groups, those with some college are likely to be people who started but never finished college.

Danny Dougherty, Jocelyn Kiley, Juliana Horowitz, Michael Dimock, Alec Tyson and Richard Auxier helped with conceptualization and production of the interactive feature. The graphic with 20th century presidents was inspired by Bill Marsh of the New

 

 

 

WASHINGTON, DC - The Supreme Court’s disappointing ruling upholding Indiana’s law requiring voter to present photo identification before casting a ballot has huge implications for millions of new voters, including young voters.  Disenfranchising voter ID laws will severely limit the ability of young people to vote.  Many young people do not have a driver’s license, only have a student ID, or do not possess identification with a current address. 

“Young voters will feel the effects of these disenfranchising laws just at the time when turnout among turnout among young people is on the rise,” said David Hardt, President of the Young Democrats of America.  “Make no mistake.  These laws are a voter suppression tool, with young voters – who have been voting overwhelmingly for Democrats in recent elections – in the crosshairs.”

“Voter identification laws are simply a partisan tool used by Republicans to intentionally disenfranchise voters who are less likely to support their extreme agenda,” said Alexandra Acker, Executive Director of the Young Democrats of America.  “The Young Democrats of America will work to incorporate voter education into all aspects of our campaign programs this Fall to help young voters, among those most impacted by this law, bring proper ID to the polls and make their voices heard through the ballot box.”

Justice Souter, in his dissent, wrote:  "Indiana's 'Voter ID Law' threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting right of tens of thousands of the state's citizens and a significant percentage of those individuals are likely to be deterred from voting."  The court, ruling 6-3, allowed Indiana’s law to go into effect for next week’s presidential primary.

###

The Young Democrats of America (YDA) is the nation's largest youth-led partisan political organization dedicated to building a solid youth voting bloc of Democrats nationwide.  

Contact: Alexandra Acker- aacker@yda.org | 202-639-8585

http://nazinla.blogspot.com/

 

Friday, April 25, 2008

Grassroots campaigners sprout in the Valley

BY NAZBANOO PAHLAVI

It’s the day before the Texas primary election, and a group of largely female volunteers are making last-minute phone calls at a Lake Balboa office used by Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Hitomi Heap-Baldwin, a volunteer from Tujunga, sounds like a seasoned campaigner on the phone. “Did you also know there is a caucus going on in the same day?” she asks a Texas voter. “Can I spend one minute telling you about it?”

This is Heap-Baldwin’s third day as a volunteer here. She is only 16 and a junior at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Canada.

Heap-Baldwin is one of many young activists involved this election season. For her, volunteering means making phone calls – even if that means skipping track practice. “I can’t just let someone else win if I’m interested in it. I have to do something about it,” she says.

Young adult professionals such as Burbank native Valerie Rothenberg, 26, are also active volunteers. Sen. Barack Obama inspired her involvement in his presidential campaign. “I think Obama especially inspires people to organize,” Rothenberg says. “He said, ‘this is your campaign, you can make a difference.’”

Her grassroots efforts started with 15 people in a friend’s Porter Ranch living room last spring, and grew from there. She was a precinct captain in her neighborhood, traveled to Nevada to campaign for Obama, and organized phone banking sessions at a North Hollywood park. Despite her dedication, Rothenberg, who is a freelance costume designer, has no intention of entering politics professionally.

Grassroots-level volunteers like Heap-Baldwin and Rothenberg are often the most effective agents for a candidate. Their active role is helpful with engaging voters who may be detached from the political process.

Bob Blumenfield, a democratic candidate for the 42nd Assembly District, believes that voters are more receptive to volunteer campaigners. “There’s a passion that’s there – not that paid staffers don’t have that passion; they do – but it’s undeniable as a volunteer,” he says.

Blumenfield has recruited high school volunteers from Birmingham High School in Van Nuys and Oakwood School in North Hollywood. He is planning another recruiting session at Van Nuys High School. He counts on the energy and enthusiasm that young people bring to his campaign.

Republican Tony Strickland also recognizes the importance of young volunteers. “It is extremely encouraging to see young people get involved in the political process at the grassroots level,” says the former Assembly member and current state senatorial candidate for Tom McClintock’s termed-out seat.

Some young activists simply have politics in their blood. Rothenberg’s father, Peter, is a coordinator for the Valley For Obama group and convened the Obama delegate caucus for Brad Sherman’s district in mid-April. Heap-Baldwin’s father, an Obama supporter, would clip news-related articles and hide them in her backpack.

Ashley Ingram, 22, was also raised in a politically active family in Burbank in the 1980s, when her parents volunteered for Ronald Reagan’s campaign. Ingram is a passionate young republican – one of a group that is not as easy to find in a largely democratic electorate like Los Angeles.

“It’s hard to come out of the republican closet, as I’d like to say, especially in the Valley,” says Ingram, who said she often felt singled-out in high school because of her conservative views.

Ingram is sharp and poised with an impressive grasp of California politics. She has already been a paid staffer on two campaigns, including her current position as Deputy Campaign Manager for Tony Strickland. She previously worked for the Rudy Giuliani campaign. She cites the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks and Giuliani’s role in the tragedy’s aftermath as factors fueling her desire to enter public service.



Many political activists refer to both September 11 and the Iraq War as the major events triggering political activism in teens and young adults. Damian Carroll, an experienced grassroots campaigner and current staffer for Assembly member Mike Feuer, says young people are more mobilized today than they were eight years ago, mainly because of those two events in addition to Hurricane Katrina.

“It brought people up to this idea that public service was important; that we had a character as a nation where we could pull together and make a difference,” Carroll says.

Cameron Silverberg, 14, is an 8th grade student at Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies in Tarzana, and a volunteer for the Obama campaign. “I just think Obama has the ability to really unify a divided country,” says Silverberg. “He has the unique ability to restore what’s broken about America right about now.”


He mentions the Iraq war and its affects on the economy as one of the main issues he cares about. The other is climate change. “He (Obama) really does understand the importance of dealing with it right now as opposed to leaving it to people like myself and my generation where we’d have to deal with it.”

Chad Jones is president of Valley Grassroots for Democracy, an organization that evolved out of a coming together of Valley-based Howard Dean and John Kerry supporters in 2005. At the time, Jones says they weren’t sure whether they wanted to create another democratic club in the Valley but then they realized something.

“If you’re trying to change the democratic party,” Jones says, “which was something we wanted to do – to make it more responsive to the grassroots - the reality is that we had to become part of the system and change it from within.”

He says that teenagers and young adults don’t join as members or participate in club activities as much as he would like. Those who are active are more likely to join the Young Democrats. “We do tend to skew older – 50 plus,” says Jones, who at 37, says he is one of the youngest members of the group.

For those young people who are disinterred in the presidential campaign, the Internet has served as this season’s power tool in reaching out and mobilizing them.

The online presence of Barack Obama has been a major asset in his courting of young voters. His personal page on the social networking site Facebook, for example, has nearly 770,000 supporters listed – about five times the number of supporters listed on the Hillary Clinton page.

“It’s not a top-heavy campaign,” says Carroll, 31, who ran as an Obama delegate in Brad Sherman’s congressional district. According to Carroll, the campaign has done so well on the grassroots level because they encouraged supporters to spread Obama’s message in a personal way. In response, supporters created videos, posted them on YouTube, and emailed them to each other – a tactic more effective than receiving an email directly from the campaign.

When Carroll first got involved in politics in 2003, he used the website Meetup.com to connect with fellow progressives. He recalls his first meeting at Dupars restaurant in Studio City, a gathering that eventually resulted in his involvement with the Howard Dean campaign.

The internet has also been important in strengthening Congressman Ron Paul’s popularity. Steven Vincent, a Studio City yoga instructor, used Meetup.com to organize Ron Paul supporters in Burbank and North Hollywood. He says one of his groups now has about 300 members.


Vincent does not look like a typical republican. On a recent day, he is wearing a neon yellow T-shirt with a Ron Paul slogan emblazoned across his chest. Although Vincent is in his 40s, he has a youthful energy that befits his political activism.

“If you had told me before March [of 2007] that I was going to register republican and campaign for a republican candidate, I would have told you that you were really crazy,” Vincent says. He mentions Paul’s “unrehearsed quality” and his Gandhi-inspired writings on peaceful non-intervention in foreign policy as traits that appealed to him.

Vincent represents a group of people not necessarily young in age, but new to grassroots politics. Grassroots work, such as phone banking or precinct walking, can be a catalyst for volunteers who continue stay active beyond their first political campaign.

Vincent, who jokingly admits he had always been a “lifelong member of the no-confidence party,” says he will continue his activist work despite Paul’s defunct bid for the presidency. He plans on participating in a grassroots distribution of Paul’s forthcoming book, The Revolution Manifesto. He also wrote an article on Paul for the February issue of LA Yoga magazine and plans on doing more writing. “It’s a movement; it’s not a political campaign,” he says.



Heap-Baldwin is also active in her community. She started her own website called Teensthinkgreen.com to promote eco-friendly lifestyle alternatives for teenagers.

For the young activist interested in a career in politics, grassroots training provides an invaluable foothold. Ingram’s training gave her experience no bachelor’s degree could replace. “We all had to pay our dues and put in our free pay and interning and getting beat up for a while, but it was completely worth it to do what we do now,” says Ingram.


Seasoned grassroots campaigners often tout the importance of passing on their training to the next generation to keep their political party or organization alive.

When Carroll first got involved in politics, the then-president of the Young Democrats of the San Fernando Valley encouraged him to get involved in local groups. Carroll ultimately became president of Young Democrats and now remains on the executive board as communications director.

“I don’t feel representative so much anymore,” Carroll says. “I’m looking to find who are the young people in our club who are up and coming – who are ready to take on more of that leadership.”

Since he first joined in 2003, the club’s membership has increased from roughly 40 to 300 members. Their budget also reflects that growth.

Ingram says college republican groups often fall apart when a president or a core group graduates. She made sure that the club she founded at the College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita had stable leadership before she left.

For Blumenfield, there is an innate sense of duty to mentor and recruit young people.

“I got involved in politics when I was very young,” he says. “You know, it changed my life in many ways – and I want to help other people have a similar experience.”

# # #

 

LACYD President Becca Doten is interviewed at the CDP Convention.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhjUNZlnbZc&feature=related

 

... Ok, so they could still learn how to edit it down.

'Youthquake' shakes up electoral politics

 

Millennials fired up over jobs, health care, and debt

By Michelle Conlin
Business Week

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22597888/

Earlier than most of his rivals, Barack Obama sensed that a youthquake was rumbling deep inside the American electorate. For months, his campaign has put a premium on reaching out to YouTube disaffecteds. So far the strategy is paying off, helped along, no doubt, by the candidate's hip, un-boomer persona.

The 46-year-old Illinois senator's surprise victory in the Iowa caucuses and close second-place finish to New York Senator Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire Democratic primary were fueled largely by hordes of twentysomethings in hoodies — the oft-pierced-and-tattooed generation that has come to be known as the Millennials, or Gen Y.

No one can predict with certainty how much influence this cohort will have on the coming election. After all, youth-backed candidates have faltered before. (Ask Howard Dean.) But the so-called echo baby boom has size on its side: nearly 43 million people aged 18 to 29, according to the Census Bureau, or 20 percent of registered voters. That and this group's hyperconnectedness (all those Facebook friends and MySpace pages) have convinced many pundits and economists that something seismic could be coming.

Across the political spectrum, they say, Millennials are mobilizing around the idea that the federal government's operating system is in dire need of a sweeping update. Iowa and New Hampshire proved that candidates ignore these voters at their peril. Youth turnout surged by 25 percentage points in the Granite State over 2004, according to the Student Public Interest Research Group, which is dedicated to getting young people to the polls.

John McCain and Clinton attracted most of the 25- to 29-year-olds, while Obama won over those aged 18 to 24. The candidates seem to understand that the Millennials could have a disproportionately loud voice in November and are starting to target them more assiduously. Note the near-comic zigzagging of campaigns after Iowa, when politicians refined their talking points to appeal to Gen Y. Clinton even replaced the oldsters surrounding her on camera during her Iowa concession speech (including a certain former President) with more youthful props at her New Hampshire victory.

‘It's going to be so difficult’

 

Gen Yers have plenty to be exercised about. They're inheriting an economy in which many of the things their parents took for granted are evaporating: company-provided health insurance, attainable housing, Social Security, affordable education, well-paying jobs. Weaned on self-esteem and jacked up on Digital Age entitlement, they take themselves seriously — and expect their elected representatives to do the same. "I think about the costs of having a family, and it's going to be so difficult," says Edward Summers, 25, an Obama supporter and assistant to the president of Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "The government needs to intervene to revive the middle class."

At first, the Millennials were the Children of the Rising Dow. They grew up during the greatest period of wealth creation in modern history, but watched their elders consume resources and run up deficits as if the party would never end. Then came the dot-com crash, terrorism, war, climate change. Epic uncertainty informs their worldview. When asked to name the issues they care most deeply about, bread-and-butter concerns such as the economy, health care, and education routinely rank high. In an October Pew Research Center poll, 80 percent of voters aged 18 to 29 cited the economy as a "very important" concern, vs. 61 percent who felt the environment was a major issue — a telling finding given all the campus activism swirling around global warming these days.

Talk of recession, a weak dollar, and rising unemployment all animate Millennials' economic angst. But there's a lot more to it than that. Young people may not know that the inflation-adjusted earnings of new college grads have fallen 8.5 percent since 2000. But they can feel it in the deflated salaries and shriveled benefits they command, even in white-collar jobs. They don't need an economics degree to understand that the middle class is squeezed. This generation has grown up watching parents struggle to stretch a buck. They lived through the mass layoffs during the corporate scandals earlier this century.

"They saw their parents get burned," says Claudia Tattanelli, CEO of Universum Communications, a research firm that specializes in Millennial workplace issues. "They watched 401(k)s that never got paid, parents losing health plans."

As the government and employers shift more responsibility for benefits like health care and retirement onto the shoulders of individuals, many Millennials see themselves as unwitting victims. Although that trend has been building for decades, this may be the first generation to fully feel the great shift of risk in their bones. "This is a group of people who understand what it means to have no safety net," says Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard University School of Law professor and co-author of "The Two-Income Trap".

"Millennials walk the economic high wire. If nothing goes wrong, they will make it safely to the other side. The slightest disruption — a layoff, an illness — and they are off the wire and falling hard," Warren added.

That sense of uncertainty is omnipresent for 22-year-old Tessa Jamison. Growing up, the George Mason University senior took ski trips with her family every winter. But after the dot-com bust, her father's insurance business in Virginia Beach, Va., suffered. The family's financial precariousness seemed compounded by the danger Jamison saw around her. She watched a friend's family struggle to pay the mother's monthly $6,000 chemotherapy bill after insurance wouldn't cover it. She saw her grandmother, a teacher for 30 years, unable to make ends meet on her pension and Social Security benefits. Jamison wants to go to law school but fears taking on the massive student loans that would require.

A more apt name for people like her may be Generation Debt. No group has ever started life so deeply in the hole, due mainly to mounting college costs, dwindling financial aid, and credit-card debt. The average college student now graduates with $20,000 in loans. Drew University sophomore Dominique Wilburn, 20, works three jobs — at a bookstore, as a resident assistant in a dorm, and at the school gym — to support herself and pay off her $41,000 debt. "In today's day and age, you have to have a degree, a graduate degree, to be competitive," says Wilburn.

What Millennials want done about student debt depends on which candidate they support. But Wilburn, a Clinton supporter, speaks for many of her peers when she says: "It's a huge issue for our generation and not enough attention is being paid to it."

Yet even a degree does not insulate twentysomethings from the vagaries of a winner-takes-all society. After graduation, Millennials move on to conduct job searches in what has become the new, global discount labor bazaar, competing against their pennies-on-the-dollar counterparts in China and India. Almost every young person you talk to knows a relative or family friend whose job has been sent overseas. Matthew Kracher, a 26-year-old who works for the Massachusetts state government and is leaning in favor of former Republican Governor Mitt Romney, says his sister lives in constant fear of losing her fashion industry job to outsourcing. "Entire companies get up and leave the U.S.," he says. "That's terrible."

Not counting on Social Security

 

Millennials also have to contend with the fact that the quality of jobs produced in the U.S. is not what it was. When their parents came of age, the paternalistic corporation was the dominant employer, offering career paths with generous, lifetime benefits and middle-class salaries. Today's biggest job growth is among the service jobs held by the working poor; the largest employer, Wal-Mart. That's a key reason why economist Jared Bernstein sketches out the Millennial plight as "starting lower, growing slower."

No wonder this generation is so obsessed with structure, savings, and security. Job recruiters say these are the primary themes in interviews. When asked about the most desirable attributes in an employer, students listed "good benefits package" far ahead of high salaries or opportunities for advancement, according to the National Association of Colleges & Employers. In part, that's because most expect Social Security to be dead and buried long before they reach retirement age. Dan Burke, a 28-year-old supporter of Representative Ron Paul (R-Tex.) who lives on Long Island and owns a Web retailer, believes it's unfair that he must contribute to Social Security. "We are forced to put our hard-earned money into it," he says. "And yet my generation won't see a penny of it."

And don't get these voters started on health care — they won't stop talking about it. Today's 19- to 29-year-olds make up the fastest-growing group of uninsureds in the U.S. "My friends can't afford to get sick," says 23-year-old Alana Kohn, a Clinton supporter and 2007 University of Michigan graduate. Most Millennials who consider themselves Democrats or independents support some kind of national health insurance program, which the leading Democratic candidates all favor. Erin Armstrong, a 20-year-old Obama supporter who attends St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., is on her parents' health plan but dreads the day she graduates and has to pay the premiums herself. "Health care is something that needs to be provided for every American at an affordable price," she says.

Given all the pressures and economic gloom, you might wonder why today's twentysomethings don't despair and disengage. There's a simple answer: They weren't raised that way. Growing up in the era of cater-to-kids politics, the V-Chip, and helicopter parenting, they were the most coddled generation ever, infused with their elders' belief that they possessed unique abilities. They also have been the most marketed-to generation, giving rise to their BS-despising, post-ironic disdain for any political solution — or candidate — that doesn't seem straight up. Thus their attraction so far to candidates, like Obama, McCain, and Paul, who they believe are outsiders representing change.

As any chief marketing officer knows, this generation believes in "owning" its favorite brands. Its members carry the same ethos to their political activism. Bringing the music and media industries to their knees was also empowering — providing Gen Yers with the self-confidence for a third-way, post-partisan manner of doing things. It's striking that the largest group of 18- to 24-year-olds, some 40 percent, consider themselves independent, according to a recent survey conducted by Harvard University, with 35 percent identifying as Democrats and 25 percent as Republicans. Millennials, like many Americans, may have lost faith in the political Establishment, but they have utter faith in themselves and their wiki-inspired abilities to get things done.

Vying for cred

For all these reasons, yesterday's solutions don't interest them. They understand the power of networked humanity. So a candidate who says, "Vote for me and I'll create a lot of programs," leaves them cold. One who says, "Join me, and together we can change this country and the world," takes a page right out of Web 2.0 and summons them to action.

To a greater or lesser degree, all of the campaigns have been targeting Millennials. Romney talks on the stump about how, as governor of Massachusetts, he instituted a scholarship program to defray college costs. All are positioning themselves as digitally aware. GOP hopeful and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee lists his favorite movies, which include "The Godfather" and "Casablanca", on his Facebook page. Romney's MySpace page features photos of backers who are far from the Young Republican stereotype. They include one young woman, calling herself Christena, shot topless from the back and sporting a massive tattoo and also a heavy-metal band from California called "Fatal Attraction."

But in the wake of Iowa and New Hampshire, expect to see the candidates scrambling after Gen Y voters as never before. No one, so far, is going after them harder than Clinton. The moment she got off her plane in New Hampshire, she told reporters: "This is especially about all of the young people in New Hampshire who need a President who won't just call for change, but a President who will produce change." Then her campaign began holding roundtables with young undecideds, including one on the campaign bus that featured the suddenly very visible Chelsea Clinton, a demographically correct age 27. The Clinton people also launched an "Ask Hillary" feature on their Web site allowing young voters to pose questions directly to the candidate. And before long Clinton, surrounded by what sometimes looked like an Abercrombie & Fitch ad, began peppering her speeches with references to Gen Y.

They're all playing catch-up to Obama, of course. For more than a year, the senator's "adultescent" campaign staffers have been swarming college campuses in beat-up cars with college logos, collecting names, building databases, and creating a social networking juggernaut that would make Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg proud. The Obama youth movement may burn out before November. But by taking the economic concerns of America's twentysomethings seriously he has put the spotlight on a generation intent on wielding their power for change.

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22597888/

 

Youth Vote in Iowa Triples: Young Voters Prove the Naysayers Wrong

by Michael Connery

Thu Jan 03, 2008 at 11:35:11 PM PST

(From the diaries - georgia10)

Barack Obama may be riding the momentum of a caucus win into New Hampshire, but the real winner in tonight's Iowa caucus was young voters.

It's been a long and rocky road for young voters - in the media and in the party -  For four years, the media has declared (incorrectly) that young voters were the downfall of Howard Dean, whose over-reliance on an "unreliable demographic" ushered in his defeat in the 2004 caucus.  This, despite the fact that youth turnout at the caucus increased that year.  For the last year, we've heard how Obama's strategy was foolhardy, and even from the campaign we heard that the youth vote would be " icing on the cake."

It turns out, it was the cake.

According to estimates by CIRCLE (pdf) youth vote turnout at the caucus tripled tonight, rising from 4% to 11%.  Within the Democratic caucus, over 46,000 young people participated, and young voters comprised 22% of all  caucus-goers.   According to entrance polls by CNN, 57% of those 17-29 year old caucus goers stood up to caucus for Barack Obama.  Tonight, they drove his campaign to victory.

The numbers themselves were larger than expected, especially considering the early caucus date during winter break for most colleges. But no one who has been paying attention to young voters in the past four years should be surprised that young Iowans played such a significant role in tonight's caucus.  These are not isolated incidents.  In 2004, youth participation in the Iowa Caucus quadrupled.  In the 2004 general election, youth turnout saw the largest increase in over a decade.  Turnout was also up in 2006 (pdf).  Tonight's caucus turnout was part of a four year trend in young voter turnout.

Tonight was also a victory for the Democratic Party.  Participation in the caucus almost doubled.  212,000 Democratic voters turned out compared to 125,000 in 2004.  About 46,000 of those caucus-goers were young voters.  Compare that to the Republicans: CIRCLE (pdf) reports that only 10,000 young people participated in the Republican caucus, just 10% of all Republican caucus-goers.  This too is a trend.  In 2004, young voters broke in favor of John Kerry over President Bush 54 - 45%.  In 2006, young voters chose Democratic candidates 60% - 38%, increasing a growing trend towards favoring progressive candidates. 

Young voters are increasingly moving in the direction of Democrats, and tonight, the Obama campaign - thanks to a savvy youth operation that reached out on Facebook and MySpace, at high schools and on college campuses - was able to capitalize on that to attain victory.  His win confirms what many have been saying for years now: young people will vote if you pay attention to the, speak to their issues, and reach out.  New technologies can certainly help make that initial connection, yet it's still good old fashioned face to face politicking - peer to peer organizing - that makes the difference.  Years ago, when young people began voting Republican during the Reagan Era, Democrats stopped asking young voters to participate.  Tonight's victory shows what individual candidates, and the Democratic Party stand to gain by courting today's young voters. 

Tonight we saw the the core of a future progressive majority make its presence known in Democratic politics.  Young Voters are not a hidden vote or icing on the cake, and after tonight, everyone knows it.

 

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/4/15520/78965/953/430265

 

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From The Huffington Post

Tonight's Winner: The Youth Vote

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THE NATION

 

The Mad-Money Primary Race

by JOHN NICHOLS
[from the January 21, 2008 issue]

Forget the debate about separation of church and state, at least when it comes to this year's first presidential caucuses and primaries. In late December and early January, along the back roads of Iowa and the country lanes spoking out from New Hampshire villages, campaign signs for not just fundamentalist Republican Mike Huckabee but for more secularly inclined Democrat John Edwards ended up sharing front-yard space with Nativity scenes. That's what happens when the nominating processes of two parties get front-loaded into the thick of the holiday season.
 
That front-loading means that the decisions made before the Twelve Days of Christmas were finished began a frenzy of caucuses and primaries that, in barely a month, is all but certain to identify the presidential nominees. If anything, the sped-up process made Iowa and New Hampshire more important, since strong showings at the start became all the more essential. That's because, despite the candidates' having spent years amassing millions in campaign funds, few will have enough to buy the television commercials they'll need to compete in the February 5 "Tsunami Tuesday," when more than twenty states, from New York to California, will be voting as part of the most absurdly accelerated, money-driven, grassroots-stomping and confusing nominating process in the history of the Republic.
 
Front-loading is not an entirely new phenomenon. Since the modern primary system came into being in 1968 and 1972, notes Tova Wang, a Democracy Fellow with the Century Foundation, "states have tried to outmaneuver each other for attention and influence" while "the parties have attempted to hold back that scramble." As the 2008 process took shape, however, any semblance of order was lost. What University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato refers to as "scheduling insanity" took hold. With the key players aware that party conventions are little more than theatrical productions, state officials seeking to leap ahead of schedules established by party chieftains no longer took seriously threats by the national committees to dock delegates from the summer sessions. Besides, the starting-gate jumpers calculated, the eventual nominees would invariably allow seating of delegations from states where they must compete in November. So Michigan, Florida and other states set January primary and caucus dates, forcing Iowa and New Hampshire officials to defend their franchises by moving close to Christmas.
 
"It's awful," says Gwen Carr, a former Democratic National Committee staffer. "No one can make any sense of it except the insiders, and even they are having trouble."
This year's nomination process is troublesome on many levels. And the need to clean it up is an urgent if little understood corollary to the current contest. It's too late to fix 2008, but now is the time to get serious about repairing the process. Every engaged observer agrees that if reforms are not implemented, the front-loading will only speed up in 2012, as states break the New Year's barrier and create a schedule that could see delegate selection begin a year before the party nominees face off.
 
To halt the slide toward anarchy, reformers must sort through a dizzying array of proposals, from schemes to establish national or regional primaries to a lottery system that would allow time for grassroots candidacies to emerge. They should ask tough questions about whether caucuses are democratic in spirit or practice. They should recognize that Congressional intervention may be necessary to force parties and states to do the right thing. And they must understand, as FairVote's Ryan O'Donnell says, that "once an incumbent is nominated and elected, he or she has no interest in changing the schedule."
 
If there is no action before next summer's Republican convention, where GOP rules require the party to begin making changes, what O'Donnell calls the "multiple levels of institutional inertia" will kick in, and the opening for reform will start to close. Unfortunately, there's little sense of urgency. More often than not, even activists who have become passionately involved in debates about voting machines and disenfranchisement neglect the need to address the nominating process.
 
"How the candidates are nominated defines everything else, yet people get so focused on the horse race that they don't always pay enough attention to the need to make the process functional and democratic," says Rob Richie, an expert on electoral systems who directs FairVote--The Center for Voting and Democracy, which has positioned itself as a key player in the push for reform. "That's the problem, because we have to have more people involved in seeking reform if it's going to happen." Richie is involved, as are assorted reformers, academics, party insiders and political veterans like former Tennessee Senator Bill Brock and California Democratic Party executive board member David Phelps, who have formed a bipartisan Fix the Primaries group, the stated purpose of which is promoting "far-reaching reform options."
 
The need for a radical reordering goes far beyond the challenges that arose when Iowans struggled to match blue Obama yard signs with green Christmas lights. In a country where the media and political classes far prefer a presidential horse race to the slog of governing, the theater of a front-loaded nominating process is so irresistible that ambitious legislators and journalists exit Washington for Iowa faster than you can say "unfinished business." Obama skipped a key vote on Iran--and then condemned Clinton for showing up and voting with the Bush Administration. Clinton, Obama, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and John McCain all missed the November vote on the Peru Free Trade Agreement, which set the agenda for future trade debates. This is not a new phenomenon, but "senatorial debilitation"--to borrow a phrase from former Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who once proposed a constitutional amendment to boot senators who spent too much time campaigning--is now so thorough that even revelations of presidential lawlessness (for instance, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's allegation that Bush was in on the plot to discredit former Ambassador Joe Wilson) aren't enough to draw media attention away from kaffeeklatsches in New Hampshire.
 
Just as governing suffers, so too does politics. "Concluding the nomination process in the winter for all intents and purposes leaves the parties' nominees in waiting, and voters with a vacuum for many months, until the conventions in the late summer," explains Wang. "That gap tends to induce the anointed candidates to focus on raising private money while the public's attention subsides, reducing the amount of time that might be more productively devoted to debating the major issues."
 
The current nominating process is so antithetical to grassroots activism in any but a handful of states that the best bet is that the two nominees will be more in tune with big donors and Washington consultants than with base voters or the zeitgeist. The front-loading has made Iowa eccentrics and check-writing cynics even more supreme than they already were. And Iowa's supposed make-or-break influence has little to do with political prescience. A candidate's ability to win its caucuses does not necessarily translate into winning the state in the general election--2004 Democratic caucus winner John Kerry went on to be the first Democrat since Walter Mondale to lose the state in November. Yet it was a first-place finish in Iowa that gave Kerry the publicity surge and fundraising force that finished off Howard Dean in New Hampshire. Dean might have been able to undo the damage of Iowa--including the media obsession with his caucus-night "scream"--if he'd had a little more time. But there was no breathing space in 2004, and there is even less in 2008: New Hampshire starts voting less than 100 hours after Iowa caucusing finishes. Then comes the mad rush ending with the February 5 tsunami. "I get dizzy just thinking about it," says a Democratic campaign strategist. "We go for broke in Iowa and New Hampshire, but after that I don't know where to put the candidate, where to buy ads. It's crazy."
 
Huckabee's surge might appear to call into question a trend that favors name recognition, big money and connections. But even Huckabee's supposedly low-budget campaign--which spent millions in Iowa and New Hampshire--owes less to the media fantasy of his "folksy charm" than a sophisticated appeal to religious prejudice against Mormon Mitt Romney. That reality has GOP insiders writing off the Arkansas evangelical on the theory that, while Huckabee's appeal might prevail in states where low-turnout caucuses and primaries heighten the influence of his evangelical base, he can be stomped in the February 5 "money race." No one knows the minimum needed to compete seriously on that day, but it could easily be $25 million.
 
Can this rigged system be reordered to create a fair fight in 2012? Yes, but it depends on the ability of reformers to capture a moment when, as veteran political strategist Steve Cobble, a longtime advocate of reform, says, "disgust with how it has all played out will be fresh enough, even among candidates and consultants, to create an opening for real reform."
 
Unfortunately, even if most of the political class is disgusted, a few key players can still thwart action. After all, it was Karl Rove who effectively created the current crisis when he blocked a Republican task force proposal to restore order with a rational and competitive primary schedule. Under the so-called Delaware Plan, the smallest twelve states would have chosen delegates in March, the next smallest fourteen in April, the next thirteen in May and the remainder in June. The schedule was designed to assure that the majority of delegates would not be chosen until the end, increasing the chance that a long, serious race for the nomination would play out over four months.
 
The Delaware Plan was to be debated at the 2000 convention, but Rove canceled it. "It had nothing to do with the merits of the plan," explained former Wyoming party chair Tom Sansonetti, who headed the task force. "It was just that the convention was scripted, and there was no room for a floor fight on whether or not the Delaware Plan should be adopted or whether the party was going to stay with its present system." The general sense among political insiders is that had the GOP embraced the reform, the Democrats would have done the same. But when the Republicans stopped talking about repairing the process, the discussion died.
 
Like many good ideas put on hold by Rove, the Delaware Plan or some variant merits reconsideration. It is far superior to holding a "national primary," which was advocated for many years by progressive reformers. On the surface, a national primary makes sense, as it would allow members of each party to vote on the same day to select candidates. The problem is that in the absence of fundamental campaign finance and media reform, a national primary would replicate most of the pathologies of November elections, with soundbites and thirty-second commercials defining a big-money, small-idea race. The same goes for regional primaries. As Cobble, a strategist for Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign who is now aiding Dennis Kucinich's quest for the Democratic nomination, says, "The idea of regional primaries taking place on or around the same day is even dumber than a national primary. Not only do candidates have to run media campaigns across various states, which creates a barrier to grassroots and insurgent campaigns; the early stages of the race--which are still likely to be most influential--can be distorted by regional issues that will differ radically if the voting starts in New England versus the South."
 
A number of savvy reformers, such as California's Tom Gangale, have come around to supporting a scheme, referred to as the American Plan, that in several senses builds on the strengths of the Delaware Plan. The American Plan is designed to begin with contests in states with small populations and then build over an extended period to primaries in bigger states. The schedule would give candidates with low name recognition and small bank accounts time to score breakthrough wins early and then attract the attention, contributions and support needed to compete with better-known and better-funded contenders in bigger states.
 
Running from March to June of election years, the American Plan would play out over ten two-week intervals, during which states selected by lot choose delegates. In the first interval, combinations of very small states with a total of eight or fewer Congressional districts--such as New Mexico with five, Maine with two and the District of Columbia with one--would hold primaries or caucuses. The point is to encourage door-to-door "retail politicking" at the opening of the process.
 
The random selection, via a lottery held a year or more before states choose delegates, would break the Iowa/New Hampshire stranglehold and allow states that are more diverse--such as New Mexico, with its large Hispanic population, and Mississippi, with its large African-American population--to be in the running for first-primary status. It would also stagger the schedule that follows the early contests, avoiding front-loading and creating a situation that would allow grassroots campaigns to build over time, as Jimmy Carter's did in 1976.
 
Whether the American Plan is the exact fix is not the point. FairVote's Richie and the group of reformers associated with the Fix the Primaries project--which includes Republicans like former Senator Brock and Sansonetti, who have worked hard to advance reforms within their party, along with California Democrats like Damian Carroll and David Phelps--go out of their way to highlight all the serious proposals. These include the American Plan, the Delaware Plan, various regional plans and even the national primary scheme. What they really want is for Congress and the parties to create a bipartisan commission to examine the options.
 
Party officials don't like the idea of Congressional involvement, as was clear last year when Senators Amy Klobuchar and Lamar Alexander proposed a regional primary system. The parties balked, claiming Congress has no authority to tell them how to nominate candidates. That's not necessarily true. With voting rights laws, federal grants to the states for the purchase of election machinery and federal funding of campaigns, Congress is already involved in the nominating process. This year the Federal Election Commission will give the Republican and Democratic national committees $4 million apiece to run their conventions. As Tova Wang explains, "The balance of opinion seems to be that the federal government can play some role." But what role? Rather than proposing a sweeping fix of its own, Congress might do best by prodding the parties with the universal lubricant of American politics: money. Of course, establishing full public financing remains the most appealing reform. But short of that, Congress could promise federal grants to cover all expenses incurred by states that run primaries on a schedule proposed by the commission and accepted by the national parties. That incentive might also encourage states to do away with antidemocratic caucuses, which in 2004 attracted less than 6 percent of eligible voters in Iowa and less than 3 percent in the ten other caucus states.
 
Even with prodding from Congress, the challenge of getting parties to embrace workable reforms is daunting. Yet it must become a piece of the broader electoral puzzle. Instead of merely complaining about a process that is not putting all its flaws on display, those committed to democratizing it must challenge the likely nominees to support the Fix the Primaries proposal for a bipartisan commission. And activists should work to assure that this summer's party conventions find room for what Rove shut out in 2000: a serious discussion of how to avoid the chaos of a front-loaded, frequently shifting yet always money- and media-defined nominating process.
 
Wang points out that the current problems cannot be ignored by those who would repair our political system. "Like other issues that the voting and civil rights communities devote attention to, the flaws in the primary process present a serious challenge to fair and equitable representation," she says. "Now that the primaries are an expected and important part of the presidential election system, reform groups [need to start addressing] them in accordance with the same democratic principles as they do for general elections."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080121/nichols

 

 

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YOUNG VOTERS WOULD VOTE DEMOCRAT BY A 62% to 30% MARGIN

Overall Generic Congressional Ballot - Democrats 48% Republicans 36%

Saturday, October 06, 2007 

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that, if the Congressional Election were held today, 48% of American voters say they would vote for the Democrat in their district and 36% would opt for the Republican. While that’s a bit closer than last month’s 18-point advantage for the Democrats, it’s the third straight month Nancy Pelosi’s Party has enjoyed a double-digit lead.

While Democrats lead among all age groups, their biggest advantage remains among the young. Among those under 30, Democrats lead by a 62% to 30% margin. They also have a five-point edge among white voters along with an enormous lead among minority voters.

The 48% support this month and 50% support last month have been the highest levels enjoyed by the Democrats this year. Prior to reaching these past two months, support for Democrats had stayed in the 45% to 47% range for six consecutive monthly surveys.

Support for Republicans had ranged from 32% to 38% over the past eight months.

A separate release showed that, during the month of September, 37.2% of Americans considered themselves to be Democrats and 32.6% were Republicans. That’s little changed from August and one more indication of a generally positive political environment for the Democrats.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of voters see most Democrats in Congress as politically liberal while 42% say most Democrats in Congress are politically moderate. Those figures are little changed over the past month (see tracking history).

Perceptions of Republicans in Congress moved a bit back towards the center over the past month. Forty-five percent (45%) see most Republicans in Congress as politically conservative, down from 48% in September but up from 43% in August (see tracking history).Thirty-five percent (35%) now see the GOP Representatives as politically moderate. That figure is up three from a month ago.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of voters say Democrats are Very Likely to retain control of Congress following the 2008 elections. Another 39% say they are Somewhat Likely to retain control.

Democrats are still trusted more than Republicans on key issues tracked by Rasmussen Reports.

Rasmussen Reports updates the Generic Congressional Ballot on a monthly basis. The Presidential Tracking Poll is updated daily.

Rasmussen Reports continuously updates key polling stats for all Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates along with ratings for Members of Congress, Other Political Figures, and Journalists.

Convinced that increased turnout among young voters in 2006 helped them regain control of Congress in 2006, Democratic congressional leaders have launched a major charm offensive aimed at college students and recent graduates.

Having just passed one bill that will expand student aid, another one earlier this year that cuts student loan interest rates and another that raised the minimum wage, Democrats are crowing about their accomplishments to a generation of voters whom they say will benefit the most from those measures: young people.

Through events on the Hill, visits to college campuses and regional conference calls to college newspaper editors, majority leaders in Congress are working to convince this potentially powerful voting bloc that they’re delivering on a youth agenda.

They’re also going online in search of young voters — with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently launching her own page on Facebook.

For now, the outreach is paying small but notable dividends. Bronson Pettitt, editor-in-chief-of the Minnesota State University-Mankato Reporter, recently participated in one such conference call with Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who chairs the Democratic Caucus, and Reps. Zack Space of Ohio and Tim Walz of Minnesota, who represents Pettitt’s district.

The three congressmen talked up the Democrats’ support and passage of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which will boost Pell Grants and other student aid. Pettitt wrote an article in the campus newspaper about the measure a day after the call.

“It was the first time I’ve done a conference call [with a politician]. And with a congressman from my hometown — it was good to hear him speak,” Pettitt said.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the effort will result in higher turnout among the under-30 crowd in the 2008 elections.

Historically, young people have lagged behind their elders when it comes to voting, but their numbers are increasing: Among 18-to-29-year-olds, 35 percent voted in the 1996 presidential election, 42 percent voted in 2000 and 52 percent voted in 2004.

That incline may explain why congressional Democrats are making targeted forays into youth territory. Republicans, too, say they’re seeking the youth vote in 2008, but they were short on specifics, noting that as the minority party in Congress, it’s difficult to get their fingerprints on youth-oriented legislation.

Last week in Washington, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a couple of events designed to highlight the Democrats’ youth-related legislative wins.

She was joined at a student forum at Howard University by several other Democratic congressional leaders: Rep. George Miller of California, who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee; House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina; and Rep. Kendrick Meek of Florida, who heads the House Democrats’ “30-Something Working Group.”

Only a day earlier, Pelosi, Miller and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, held a ceremony to mark passage of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act.

At Howard, Pelosi and Miller described that bill as the centerpiece of the Democrats’ comprehensive youth agenda.

The same day, the party released its “Progress Report on the 110th Congress for Young Americans,” highlighting the increase in the minimum wage — which disproportionately affects young workers — and action on global climate change.

Pelosi also framed environmental and energy policy as having special importance to young voters since they’ll have to live with the consequences of today’s decisions.

Pelosi cited as a key component of the Democrats’ takeover of Congress the fact that 2 million more young people voted in 2006 than in previous midterms.

ut press secretary Drew Hammill said Pelosi’s focus on youth issues long predates the election. “She would be pushing for these policies because it’s the right thing to do for the country to invest in the future,” Hammill said.

He also cited her creation of the “30-Something Working Group” of young Democratic members of Congress when she was minority leader in 2003 as proof of her commitment to promoting youth issues in Congress.

And Pelosi has visited several local college campuses to talk about youth topics in the past, he said.

The flurry of events still suggests Democrats are picking up the pace in seeking to attract young voters.

The event at Howard was coordinated by Pelosi’s office and the university administration, according to DeVaughn Ward, president of the Howard University College Democrats, who learned about it only two days before the forum.

Howard students were extremely receptive to the Democrats but asked tough questions.

Most were concerned about pocketbook issues, but some challenged Pelosi on whether the congressional leadership is taking bold enough action on withdrawal from Iraq and on combating climate change.

Just an hour before the Howard event began, Emanuel led the private conference call with college newspaper editors and reporters from Midwestern universities, including Pettitt.

Previously, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland made a similar call to college editors in the mid-Atlantic, and Clyburn talked to editors at several Southern and historically black colleges.

Pettitt said the Democrats pushed hard to get him on the call. He had not planned on joining the conference call because it was held on a production day, but he relented after receiving a follow-up invitation to join the call.

“I appreciate that it showed they want to talk to college students,” Pettitt said. When he wrote the article on the college cost bill the day after the call, most students he interviewed hadn’t heard about it but were “pleasantly surprised” when they did.

Hammill also pointed to increasing use of online media as a central component of congressional Democrats’ youth outreach strategy. Along with her new Facebook page, Pelosi distributes a weekly, youth-targeted e-newsletter called “Speaker Pelosi’s 411.” And the 30-Something Working Group will launch weekly YouTube videos on youth issues.

Asked about efforts by House GOP leaders to appeal to young voters, National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ken Spain wrote in an e-mail, “Through this committee’s new media strategy, Republicans are interacting and conversing with a new generation of voters in a totally new way.”

He cited a video contest as an example of the user-driven content that will engage younger viewers.

Don Seymour of The Freedom Project — the political action committee of House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) — said that in this election cycle, Republicans will “engage young voters in a real conversation about how issues like spending and taxes, energy security and health care will affect them personally in years to come.”

As for methods of outreach, Seymour said the project’s website “will play a central role in our effort, but we’ll also take advantage of existing tools to reach young voters online where they already are: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook.”

Winning the hearts of young voters in the next election cycle will be only half the battle for either party — they’ll still have to get them to the polls.

Ward predicts a “record-breaking” youth turnout at Howard. And Pettitt, while acknowledging that students are apathetic about politics now, expects turnout to exceed 2004 levels on his campus.

“I think people will get more excited next January, after the caucuses start,” said Pettitt. “At least, I hope so.”

UPDATE: The turnout numbers among 18-to-29-year-olds in presidential election years cited were from exit polls. The more reliable statistics, calculated by the Census Bureau, show the same trend but slightly different numbers. They are 39.6 percent in 1996, 40.3 percent in 2000, and 49.0 percent in 2004.

The earlier figures rounded the 1996 number (34.9 percent) down to 34 when it should have rounded up to 35.

Candidates court youth vote But question lingers: Will they cast ballots?

Article published Sep 9, 2007

Until recently, Erin Thesing, 19, a University of New Hampshire sophomore, described herself politically as "completely apathetic."

Then, she met Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at her school. "Seeing him in person fired me up, and since then I've become really passionate," she said.

Now, Thesing surfs political blogs and signs up for environmental groups' mailing lists. She spent the summer volunteering with Obama's campaign.

The Obama campaign has made a strong effort to reach young voters like Thesing, and so far, polls say, young people could provide more of a boost to Obama than to any other candidate. But Obama is not alone. Candidates from both parties have been working popular websites like YouTube and Facebook, visiting college campuses, and honing messages on issues that attract young support.

But even as campaigns are ramping up efforts to attract students and young professionals, historically, turnout of young voters has been dismal, making them a notoriously undependable base.

"It's like Lucy and Charlie Brown, where Lucy says 'this time I'll hold the football for you,' " said Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. "Any candidate who thinks they'll win because of the youth vote is losing or deluding themselves."

MTV and Deany Boppers

The role model of a youthful president is John F. Kennedy. In 1960, Kennedy became the youngest elected U.S. president at 43, three years younger than Obama is today. "Kennedy was a movie star in many ways, a handsome man who seemed approachable and had a youthful vigor about him," said Wayne Lesperance, associate professor of political science at New England College.

Since then, several politicians have tried to follow Kennedy's lead. There was Bill Clinton, who appeared on MTV answering questions about whether he wore boxers or briefs. (Answer: briefs). There was Howard Dean, who galvanized a network of young "Deany Boppers" before losing the 2004 Democratic nomination.

Democrats have not always had a lock on the youth vote. In the 1980s, young voters, like older ones, moved to the GOP. "Reagan came in very optimistic, and many people saw him as a grandfatherly figure," Lesperance said. John McCain attracted young Republicans in 2000, although many now seem to have abandoned him.

But since the 1990s, young people have voted increasingly Democratic. In 2004, young voters broke with their older counterparts for the first time nationally, as the only age group in which the majority voted for John Kerry over President Bush.

The trend seems likely to continue in 2008, particularly as the younger generation grows more racially and ethnically diverse. Several polls compiled by Young Voter Strategies, a nonpartisan group, found around 45 percent of young voters identifying themselves as Democrats, compared with 25 percent as Republicans. In New Hampshire, Smith said, 59 percent of young voters say they will vote in the Democratic primary and 41 percent in the Republican primary.

Beyond party affiliation, political scientists cite several factors that attract young voters: youthful candidates, energy and excitement, a clear message and vision, a compelling personal story and a candidate who speaks directly to youth.

"It's good to see a candidate who's honest and says what he thinks, who won't change because everyone says he's wrong," said Jeni Sullivan, 21, a New England College student who takes one of Lesperance's classes.

Peter Francese, director of demographic forecasting for New England Economic Partnership, said younger voters like to hear about their concerns - college debt, educational funding, housing costs and affordable health insurance.

In this election, polls cite the Iraq war as the most important issue to all age groups. Kat Barr, education director for Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan group aimed at mobilizing young voters, said even on issues that concern all generations, candidates need to address young voters. "It's something as simple as not referring to troops in Iraq as our sons and daughters, but . . . as brothers and sisters," Barr said.

The Facebook campaign

With competitive primaries in both parties, all the candidates are reaching out to young people. Top Democratic and Republican campaigns have designated youth coordinators, which no 2004 campaign did until after the primaries, Barr said. Democrat John Edwards has a volunteer coordinator at every New Hampshire college campus, and his 25-year-old daughter, Cate, will visit campuses this fall, said state press secretary Kate Bedingfield. Last week, McCain announced the formation of a student organizing group at the University of New Hampshire.

Campaigns are using the video site YouTube and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Republican Mitt Romney is inviting voters to create campaign commercials online. Republican Fred Thompson's website links to the blog sites twitter and del.icio.us. One supporter site is titled "Fredheads."

But the most aggressive campaign is from Obama, who has five full-time staff working on the New Hampshire youth vote, said spokesman Reid Cherlin. An official "Students for Barack Obama" website lists New Hampshire chapters at eight colleges, a law school, a medical school and 14 high schools. Statewide, the campaign held several youth organizing days, had 65 full-time interns this summer and 45 this fall, and plans to start training high school supporters, Cherlin said.

The campaign has a text messaging program called "Obama mobile." Nationally, the campaign runs Generation Obama, a young professionals group. The campaign enlisted Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes as an online organizer and has started its own networking websites where supporters create blogs, networks and fundraising pages.

According to the website techPresident, Obama had 141,000 Facebook supporters as of Friday. Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton ranked second among all candidates with 41,000. Obama had 173,000 MySpace "friends," Clinton had 134,000 and no other candidate, Democrat or Republican, had more than 60,000.

Obama's efforts seem to be paying off. In national polls between March and June, Obama led Clinton among Democrats ages 18 to 29 by two to five percentage points, but trailed among all ages by 10 percent. In New Hampshire, Smith said his polls show Obama beating Clinton 35 to 28 percent among 18- to 34-year-olds, while overall Clinton is ahead 33 to 25.

On the Republican side, polls found young Republicans nationally supporting Rudy Giuliani and McCain over Romney at a higher rate than other age groups. But, in New Hampshire, the differences between younger and older Republican voters are small, Smith said.

'Bring cool back'

In Concord recently, Obama said he could "bring cool back to the federal government." Several young supporters have called him a "fresh face" in Washington, who seems genuine in promoting hope and change.

Mark Lopez, research director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at the University of Maryland, called Obama an "electrifying candidate that young people tend to gravitate to."

Also on the Democratic side, Clinton, as the first female candidate with a serious chance of winning the White House, has the potential to draw young women who find her candidacy inspiring. Alison Cassavaugh, 18, a student at New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord who supports Clinton, said, "There hasn't been a female voice before in an election. The female has a powerful voice that needs to be heard."

A survey of Lesperance's New England College political science class last week found five supporters each for Democrat Joe Biden and Clinton; three for McCain and Giuliani; and two for Obama.

Several students said they felt insulted by the idea that they were seeking a "cool" candidate. While they valued candidate's web pages and YouTube videos, none said they got political information from social networking sites. "I resent that idea the youth vote is MySpace," said David Bates, 26. "My student loans have 9 percent interest, and I haven't heard anyone talk to us about that."

'Ambition deficit'

Experts suggest that the reason candidates have not historically addressed youth issues is numbers - young people may volunteer, but they do not vote. Until 2004, youth voter turnout had declined virtually every year. In New Hampshire, voter turnout in presidential elections among ages 18 to 29 ranged from 35 percent to 50 percent before 2004, compared with 68 to 78 percent of the over-30 crowd, according to CIRCLE.

"Young people aren't rooted in a community, they don't own property, they don't have a stake in what's happening right away, they're not sure they're going to stay in the state. They're less likely to bother going to the polls," Francese said.

In an aging state like New Hampshire, the problem is particularly acute. Francese said last year there were about 60,000 registered voters ages 18 to 24, and 125,000 registered voters older than 65.

In interviews, several young non-voters said they did not care who ran the country because it did not affect them. One engaged voter said his generation suffered from an "ambition deficit."

"I don't have any interest in politics right now," said Jacob Drovin, 18, a student at the New Hampshire Technical Institute. "Maybe if I owned a house or had to pay taxes. Now I live with my parents and get everything for free. I don't feel like I have to vote."

But that trend may be changing. In the 2004 presidential race, nonpartisan youth vote organizations invested $40 million in outreach, Barr said. Lopez said the contested nature of the election combined with new laws in some states, such as election day registration, that made it easier for young people to vote, drew out more young voters than ever before.

Between 2000 and 2004, young voter turnout increased by 11 points nationally, according to CIRCLE. In New Hampshire, 2004 marked the first election where more than half - 58 percent - of voters 18 to 29 turned out.

Lopez predicted that young voters would turn out in 2008 at similar rates. And students who are involved are already trying to convince their friends to show up at the polls.

"We're the generation coming up," said New England College student Amanda Ledwith, 21. "If we're not involved in politics, 10 years from now, where's a candidate going to be? It's stupid we're not voting - it's our future."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/27/MNMIRNDUK.DTL

 

Two larger-than-life politicians, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan, charged into the California governor's office with the help of young voters, many of whom were drawn to the Republican Party by a message of sunny optimism.

But what those two very different Republican politicians did to attract millions of young adults looks to be a feat the Grand Old Party may not repeat anytime soon - either in California or on the national level in the
2008 presidential election.

A Democracy Corps poll from the Washington firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner suggests voters ages 18 to 29 have undergone a striking political evolution in recent years.

Young Americans have become so profoundly alienated from Republican ideals on issues including the war in Iraq, global warming, same-sex marriage and illegal immigration that their defections suggest a political setback that could haunt Republicans "for many generations to come," the poll said.

The startling collapse of GOP support among young voters is reflected in the poll's findings that show two-thirds of young voters surveyed believe Democrats do a better job than Republicans of representing their views - even on issues Republicans once owned, such as terrorism and taxes.

And among GOP presidential candidates, only former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani registers with more positive views than negative with young voters, the poll shows.

The anti-GOP shift for this generation - which is expected to reach 50 million voters, or 17 percent of the electorate, in 2008 - represents a marked contrast from their predecessors, the Gen Xers born in the mid-'60s to mid-'70s whose demographic represented the strongest Republican voters in the nation, pollster Anna Greenberg said.

Today, "on every single issue, Democrats are doing better with young people - no matter what the issue is," said Greenberg.

Catherine Brinkman, 28, of Foster City, who heads the California Young Republicans, said she hears from many of her Republican friends who say, "'Look at our (presidential) candidates compared to the Democrats: They have Hillary, everyone knows her ... and you have this phenomenal (senator) out of Chicago, who is African American and energized.' " The perception is that "we're still selling the same old white guys," Brinkman said.

The problem for the Republicans with young voters may be especially potent in California, where political veterans say the widening gulf between Schwarzenegger and the increasingly conservative tilt of Republican elected officials threatens a party that already has found it difficult to win statewide for the past 15 years.

"I think you have to be concerned when you have some (Republican) people who are saying that global warming is a hoax and that status quo for health care is acceptable," said Adam Mendelsohn, the communications director for Schwarzenegger.

"These are all positions that don't reflect where Republicans are in this state - and this is especially true when you start looking at young Republicans."

Schwarzenegger, by supporting issues "once owned by the Democrats," such as the environment and education, has lured many young voters to support him and "closely identify themselves as Schwarzenegger Republicans," Mendelsohn said.

But Democratic strategist Garry South said Schwarzenegger's success at the polls won't translate to other Republican candidates.  South pointed toward the recent state budget battle, which pitted Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislators against conservative GOP senators who delayed the $145 billion budget for almost two months to pressure for more cuts and protections for businesses against
environmental lawsuits.

The demands of the state senators, South said, were so far to the right of the average voter that "the Republican brand in California now is so tainted and toxic that the only way you're going to win is to buy yourself out of the brand."

That means wealthy GOP candidates such as Schwarzenegger or Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner must dip into their considerable bank accounts to "spend millions and tell voters why you're different. But if not - you will go down like lambs to the slaughter," South said.

In California, the GOP's relatively weak prospects in the presidential election and in future statewide elections can be traced to what has been an increasingly tone deaf approach to a new set of priorities among voters, particularly the young, said Cal State Sacramento political communications Professor Barbara O'Connor.

"The fact that the governor's rating is around 60 percent is indicative of the legacy solutions that he proposes are resonating with the voters," including health care, infrastructure issues and education, O'Connor said.  "When a bridge is collapsing, the levees are in danger of flooding, or they're sitting in gridlock ... people don't care about, 'I saved you this much money,' " O'Connor said of the traditional Republican effort to cut the budget. "They care when their life is better. Parties should try to
fix things - or ignore them at their peril."

Greenberg said the poll showed the war in Iraq and President Bush are unpopular with younger voters, which contributed to the decline in support for the GOP.

Younger voters, who grew up in the Clinton years, are also increasingly at odds with the GOP and its leaders on social issues. "This is a more diverse generation, racially and ethnically, and it's more progressive on social issues like gay marriage," Greenberg said. "They see the Republican Party as profoundly different on tolerance and identity."

The poll also suggests the GOP is not addressing young voters' deep concerns about their future economic security. "Young people's economic struggles, more than any other issue, defines their political agenda," she said.

The study released last month of 1,017 voters ages 18-29 was conducted May 29-June 19. Voters were reached by a random telephone survey, through the Internet and on cell phones. The poll did not disclose a margin of error.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner is a polling firm generally affiliated with Democrats. Its founder, Stan Greenberg, was a pollster for Democratic President Bill Clinton.

The GOP's problems for the future that show up in the poll are evident among young conservatives such as Wes Hanson, 17, a Livermore High School senior who describes himself as church-going, strongly anti-abortion and deeply concerned with the impacts of illegal immigration. But Hanson, who will cast his first presidential ballot in the 2008 election, is not sure he will register Republican - and is just as likely to be a "decline-to-state" or independent voter.

"I feel that Republicans tend to look out more for the best interests of the majority," especially on fiscal issues and moral responsibility, Hanson says.

But, like many in his age group, he has a libertarian streak and believes party lawmakers are wrong to try to legislate issues such as same-sex marriage.

"I don't think it's any of the government's business," said Hanson, who says he is still not inspired by any of the GOP's 2008 presidential candidates.

Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, acknowledged the challenges that the Iraq war and other issues have created for the party, but said they are not insurmountable.

"Obviously, this is a tough political environment for our party, but we believe our brand of individual responsibility, lower taxes and national security is one that resonates with youth voters," he said

Brinkman, with the Young Republicans, said GOP leaders can start making repairs by going back to the Reagan playbook - and "back to our core values." That means talking about how lower taxes, less government and fiscal responsibility can deliver opportunity for students and young professionals - and hope.

With headlines about a mortgage crisis, outsourcing, health care costs and immigration, she said young voters want their political parties to stop fighting and offer solutions.

"When it comes to the American dream," Brinkman says, "we're thinking, where is it?"

Brinkman backs Giuliani for president and believes he may be the kind of leader who can inspire young people who may be deserting the Republican Party.

The former New York mayor has star power and an energized message - and the under-30 crowd knows him from his performance in New York after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. "He has something that people want to see; they want to be around him," she said.

 

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