A Diverse Young Coalition Behind Obama

By Cora Currier

Additional analysis of exit polls from November 4th confirms that young voters were the most diverse group of the electorate, with larger percentages identifying as Hispanic, African-American and gay or lesbian than the voting population as a whole. However, a major discrepancy remains between young people with a college education and those without. This analysis-- carried out by CIRCLE, a civic research group-- found that 70 percent of young voters who went to the polls had attended college, even though only 57 percent of Americans under 30 have gone to college. Similarly, only 6 percent of young voters failed to graduate high school, while 14 percent of the entire youth population falls in this category.

There are some obvious reasons for this. CIRCLE has done extensive reports on the state of civic education in American high schools, finding that civic classes were spotty in most public schools, and particularly those in poorer and minority areas. At the same time, they found that individuals who had taken civic education in high school were more likely to be registered to vote, more likely to volunteer, and more likely to trust in the political process. At the campaign level, young people are much easier to reach on campus, leading campaigns to overwhelmingly target college students. Without a central meeting place like a campus, it takes a lot more effort by campaigns to reach out to non-college young people-- something campaigns need to work on.

But despite this discrepancy, young voters at every education level threw their support behind Barack Obama. CIRCLE's analysis confirms what we already knew-- that Obama drew support from young people across all sorts of demographic lines, including young people who identify as conservatives. The Democratic party as a whole also benefited this election-- more young people now identify as Democrats (45 percent) than the population as a whole (39 percent). Most telling, it seems, is this figure: half of young voters said they would be "excited" by an Obama win, compared to 30 percent of all voters and just 20 percent of voters over 60. Obama has certainly captured this generation, and I'll be writing more in the coming weeks about how their involvement will play out post-election.

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November 24, 2008

The Power of Young Voters

By Cora Currier

The numbers are in: youth turnout increased by 3.4 million votes over 2004, for a turnout rate of at least 52 percent. As raw numbers go, this election marks the largest youth turnout since 1972, when the voting age was lowered to 18. In an election that saw a large increase in overall voter turnout, CIRCLE, a civic engagement think-tank, estimates that people under 30 accounted for 60 percent of that overall increase.

There's no question that Barack Obama overwhelmingly beat out John McCain among young voters. While the overall vote split was roughly 53 percent to 46 percent, among young voters Obama won in a landslide: 66 percent to McCain's 31. This split by age group is unprecedented, according to CIRCLE-- youth have historically deviated from the overall margin by only 1.8 percentage points.

While claiming that any one group is responsible for a win is near-impossible, there's no question that young voters comprised a major force no matter how you slice-and-dice the electorate. African-American and Latino voters also solidly backed Obama, and large numbers of those groups were also young voters. According to an analysis by James Carville, young voters were crucial to Obama's victory in toss-up states like Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina. Mike Connery at Future Majority has a great set of maps representing the youth vote visually-- including one that shows how blue the country would be if only youth voted in 2004 and 2008. The difference between the two elections is striking.

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November 8, 2008

Boston Takes to the Streets

By Cora Currier

The college crowd was ecstatic tonight in Boston,taking over city streets and bars to celebrate a president-elect they could call their own.

At Tufts University, the quad overflowed with hundreds of students chanting "Yes We Can" and singing the national anthem.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts -- lovingly known to its residents as "the people's republic of Cambridge" -- the streets were jammed with crowds chanting and cars honking. Hundreds of students and residents shut down over a mile of Massachusetts Avenue, a major thoroughfare, with an impromptu march complete with drums and noisemakers. Finally, around 2 am, police corralled the marchers onto the sidewalk and the crowd dispersed.

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November 5, 2008

Students Flood New Hampshire

By Cora Currier

MANCHESTER, NH-- The Obama headquarters in Manchester is abuzz with college and high school students from across New England, some of whom have been here since the weekend and are running on about 3 hours of sleep a night.

Hundreds of students have come each day from Boston University, Harvard, Wellesley and Dartmouth over the past few days, as well as high schoolers from local public and prep schools. New Hampshire is the lone swing state within reach of New England's large college population, who feel that their efforts are a moot point in liberal bastions like Massachusetts.

Older volunteers at the Obama headquarters said they'd never seen so many young people involved in an election. And indeed, the headquarters felt like a pep-rally, littered with hand-colored posters and kids as young as twelve handing out sodas and snacks. Organizers said they're taking advantage of youthful legs to pound the pavement knocking doors, while others remain inside manning the phones.

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November 4, 2008

Student Voting Challenged in VA

By Cora Currier

Students at Radford University in Virginia got some bad news recently-- the local county registrar's office informed them that they were ineligible to vote because they listed their dormitory addresses on their voter registration application.

The county registrar, Tracy Howard, told a local newspaper in October that "a dorm is generally--and I say generally--the same thing as a long-term motel stay." Some students who had registered using their school address had been sent postcards asking them to re-state their "home" address, and those that replied with dormitory addresses again were disqualified. Other students received no requests for clarification, and though they submitted applications more than a month in advance of the deadline, were notified of their ineligibility a week after it had passed.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that students may register to vote where they attend school, and the Virginia state board of elections explicitly states that a dormitory may constitute a valid address. What's more, the additional paperwork sent to students violates the constitutional requirements against discrimination against particular groups of voters, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The center, along with the ACLU of Virginia, sent a letter detailing these complaints last week, and threatening legal action if the students applications are not cleared. The ACLU has also set up a service through their website that allows voters to report problems they experience.

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November 2, 2008

Text-Messages Drive Voter Turnout

By Cora Currier

Registration numbers and high rates of early voting point to a real increase in youth voting this year, but organizers haven't let up in their push to get young people to the polls on election day. It seems the most effective new tool may be text messaging.

Young Democrats of America have a plan for a text-message blast reminding people to vote on November 4th. Their program, "Young Voter Revolution," allows voters to sign up to receive an election day reminder by texting "VOTEDEM" to a simple number. It also encourages them to forward the message to all the contacts in their cellphone. A group called Credo Mobile has a similar program through the website Txt Out The Vote.

Text message reminders were shown to boost youth turnout by 4.6 percentage points during the "Super Tuesday" primary contests this February, according to a study by Credo Mobile and Student PIRGs. The Obama campaign has used texting to great effect as a way of reaching out to voters, most famously through their plan (somewhat foiled by leaks) to announce Joe Biden as Obama's VP pick via text.

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October 29, 2008

Across Races, A Progressive Youth Agenda

By Cora Currier

Young people support Barack Obama across racial boundaries, but they also seem to agree on a lot more than a candidate.

The Center for American Progress released a study this week indicating that whites, blacks and Hispanics ages 18-29 are a remarkably united front when it comes to their political and economic views. The study compared its findings to average data from the past 20 years. Historically, young blacks and Hispanics have tended to be more progressive on economic issues than average, but in recent years, young whites are moving farther left and closing the gap on key economic issues like support for unions and universal health care.

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October 10, 2008

Students Fight for Their Right to Vote

By Cora Currier

Last week was both a boon and a bust to student voting rights, as Congress held a hearing on safeguarding students' right to vote, and troublesome allegations surfaced about swing state voter intimidation.

The Supreme Court in 1979 guaranteed students the right to register and vote in the district in which they attend school. Many students who attend out-of-state schools don't do this-- they use absentee ballots to vote in their home state. But for many others, their college town, district, or state quickly becomes their home. They spend the majority of the year there; many students volunteer or work in their school communities; they pay taxes there (sales tax, and income tax if they work while studying). But the process of switching states can be confusing for students-- some states have more stringent residency requirements than others, such as not accepting college addresses as proof-of-residence.

On Thursday, Congress held a hearing entitled "Ensuring the Right of College Students to Vote," with testimony from groups like the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE), who spoke of barriers to voting such as inadequate polling places and long lines. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill), also testified in favor of the bill she introduced in July that would require all federally-funded colleges to provide voter registration materials to students when they register for classes. The president of Oberlin College said that Ohio permits colleges to issue utility bills to students as proof-of-residence. All of these would be great steps to giving students fair and easy access to the vote.

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September 29, 2008

It's the Economy, Duh.

By Cora Currier

Despite Republican claims to be expanding youth outreach and their hopes that younger conservative voters would be swept up in "the Palin Bump," there seems to be little evidence that the allegiances of young Americans have shifted much, if at all, in the past few months of the election. Rock the Vote released a new poll yesterday that reaffirms younger voters' dedication to both Barack Obama and the Democratic party.

Their poll, which was conducted by calling cellphones as well as land lines to better reach a representative sample of young people, finds voters ages 18-29 supporting Obama 56% to McCain's 29%, a number which has hardly budged since Rock The Vote's last poll in February. Sarah Palin and Joe Biden have had little effect on young people's thinking-- Biden is largely unknown, with 30% having no opinion on him, while Palin is viewed negatively by 40%, and positively by only 37%. In terms of party affiliation, 50% of respondents identified themselves as Democrats, only 29% as Republicans, and 12% as independents (a number that has declined from polling earlier in the election cycle). Participation and enthusiasm remain unflagging-- almost 90% of respondents said they plan to vote.

The main revelation in the poll is the economy's surge to the top of the list of young voters' concerns. This really isn't surprising given the current climate--this generation will be dealing with the repercussions (and debt) of our financial crisis for years to come. Behind the economy come the war in Iraq, healthcare, gas prices and college costs. From a policy standpoint, young people are already aligned with Democrats on the first two-- they favor universal healthcare and a quick withdrawal from Iraq.

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September 24, 2008

Palin's Ploy for Young Voters

By Cora Currier

No group (other than the African-American community) is as reliably pro-Obama as the youth vote-- in nearly every match-up Obama beats McCain among 18-29 year-olds by upwards of 20 points. In fact, the case can be made that Obama needs the youth vote to win: their turning out in record numbers is crucial to his success, especially in battleground states like Virginia and Colorado. His team is counting on the fact that this youth bump hasn't shown up in recent polls, which tend to under-sample young voters.

Now, Republicans are hoping Sarah Palin might steal some of Obama's youth-thunder by injecting some badly needed hipness into the aging McCain campaign. In a piece today Republican strategists said they thought Palin could connect with young voters because she's 28 years McCain's junior, and thus closer to their generation. Most specifically, they plan on highlighting her hard-line stance on abortion, which they hope can spike turnout among conservative young evangelists. The story quotes members of outreach groups called Redeem the Vote and Students for Life who are dedicated to making abortion an issue this campaign.

However, hardcore anti-choicers probably weren't voting for Obama anyway, and furthermore, as Bob Moser's March article found, many young evangelicals now are motivated by things other than abortion, such as poverty and the environment, and may not be swayed by Palin's rhetoric. Among young American's overall, more than half support legal abortion, though it ranks low as a priority issue.

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September 11, 2008