Poll: 18-30-Year-Olds to Play Major Role in 2008 Elections

Today, Rock the Vote, WWE®’s Smackdown Your Vote!®, and Sacred Heart University released a new nationwide poll of 18-30-year-olds that indicates young voters are likely to play a major role in the 2008 elections, going to the polls motivated by concerns over the war in Iraq, health care, the economy, and the cost of education.

The poll found that Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are currently the top primary choices among 18-30-year-old Democrats and Republicans.

From the news release:

“Young voters are a potential powerhouse in the 2008 elections,” said Kat Barr, research director with Rock the Vote. “This poll is yet another indicator that candidates who want to win in 2008 must court this large and increasingly active group of voters.” After declining nearly continuously for three decades, 18-29-year-olds’ voter turnout has increased in the past two major elections. In 2004, 4.3 million more voters under 30 cast ballots than had in 2000 – the total 18-29-year-old vote, 20.1 million, rivaled in size the much sought-after over-65 vote (23 million). Youth turnout also increased in 2006, by 1.9 million over 2002 levels.

Key findings:

Increasingly Engaged and Positive
• More than three-quarters (77%) indicated they are paying a “great deal” of attention to the November 2008 presidential election, much higher rates than found in similar polling from this time in 2003.
• A large majority (87%) report they plan to vote in November 2008, and 85% believe that their vote counts, up from 75% one year ago. (SHU 9/06 poll)

Top Issues
• Top issues are the war in Iraq (28%), health care (22%), the economy (14%), and education (13%).
• When asked whether they agreed with certain statements, 82% reported they are concerned with college affordability, 68% said global warming is a real and growing threat, and 65% said the U.S. government should provide universal health care to all.
• On Iraq, 49% of 18-30-year-olds said the U.S. should withdraw immediately. When asked about the surge, 49% said that it appears to be helping the situation.

Vote Choice
• Among young Democrats, Hillary Clinton was the top choice to win the Democratic primary (54%), followed by Barack Obama (24%), and John Edwards (8.4%).
• Among young Republicans, Rudy Giuliani received the most primary support (32%), followed by Fred Thompson (20%), Mitt Romney (16%), and John McCain (13%).
• For the November 2008 general election, 56% of 18-30-year-olds chose a Democrat as their preferred candidate, while 39% selected Republican candidates.

For the news release and full poll results, see Rock the Vote's website or visit Sacred Heart University.

How to Get 18-35 Year-Olds to Vote for Your Candidate

Post written by Jane Fleming Kleeb, the Executive Director of the Young Voter PAC. Cross-posted from the Young Voter PAC blog.

November 6th--Election Day 2007--is just around the corner for folks in many states. If you're reading this, you probably don't need to be convinced to target young people to vote in the upcoming elections. If you still need convincing, you might want to check out an article in the Politico that laid out some statistics.

The bottom line is if you target and talk to young people they will vote. Not rocket science, true enough. But with Election Day looming for many campaign staffers, volunteers and candidates, the Young Voter PAC thought we would offer up 5 activities that your campaign can do to get 18-35 year-olds to the polls. Don't fret if you have not started targeting young voters yet. You still have time since many young people, and yes even older voters, don't pay attention until right at the end.

Each idea below is linked to an organization that has done these activities many times and they should be looked to as a resource for more detailed information and sample materials. Don't reinvent the wheel, young voter groups like those below, are here as a resource.

1. Go Trick or Voting. Get a bunch of volunteers and your candidate and head to neighborhood streets and community Halloween parties. Create signs saying "Don't Be Tricked By (insert other candidate's name), Vote (insert your candidate's name)" and have volunteers carry the signs. You can even make old-school sandwich boards for volunteers to wear. Get volunteers to dress up as famous Democrats or people that highlight progressive issues that the campaign has focused on during the election cycle (e.g. nurses and doctors to symbolize health care for all). Use this Halloween holiday as a creative time to reiterate your message, get some earned media and increase visibility.

2. Create "Pledge to Vote" cards. Research (and common sense) tells us that if a young person "pledges" to vote they vote in higher numbers. Groups like YDA and the PIRGs have been using pledge cards for years and it works. Simply create the pledge to vote cards and arm your volunteers with clipboards. Create fun contest to have them compete with one another to get as many pledge cards in a few hours. Use the information on the pledge cards (make sure you get name, email, cell, address) to contact young voters before and on Election Day.

3. Do a bar crawl. You can also choose to do a coffee house crawl, an elementary school crawl, a supermarket crawl....you get the point. Any place where 18-35 year-olds hang out in your targeted areas is where you want to send the candidate and a group of energetic volunteers. Make sure you all wear campaign t-shirts and bring quarter-sheet sized information flyers about your candidate. When you go to places where young people hang out, they don't want to lug around a big pamphlet, so all you need to do is use some text from existing lit, give it a younger spin and create it so there are 4 flyers per page. Make sure the info sheets on your candidate have the date of the election, where someone can find their polling location and the number to call if they face problems voting. You can even bring "Pledge to Vote" cards to the bar crawl to make the crawl more effective since this way you will have contact information of the young voters you talked to for GOTV.

4. Make a Voter Guide. We all get busy and can't keep up with the candidates and ballot initiatives that are happening on Election Day. Make it easy for young voters and create a voter guide that lists who/what to vote for and why. Leave the voter guides at places like coffee shops, college cafeterias and people's door steps. You can also hand them out as people are headed home from work and school in heavy trafficked areas like bus stops, metro centers, schools and supermarkets.

5. Throw a Party at the Polls. Why not make polling locations fun. Bring food, music, signs, candidate lit, balloons, just about anything to make it fun and welcoming. We forget that voting can at times be intimidating. Placing volunteers at polls, especially those that are populated with a lot of young people, and making the atmosphere fun can increase the likelihood of a young voter stopping and going in to vote.

Above all else, keep young people on your GOTV call and walk list.

Resources get tight in the last days of an election, but the biggest mistake your campaign will make is to cut young people from your GOTV lists. Campaigns usually cut young voters because they have no vote history or they don't have the frequency of voting as older voters. Think in terms of a young voter-this may be their first eligible election so of course they have no vote history...yet! Go against the grain and leave young voters on your lists.

When trying to get young people to the polls, you must throw out the conventional wisdom of "young people don't vote." Young people don't vote at the same rate as older voters because they are not targeted. Talk to young voters and they will vote. Having other young people and the candidate do the asking and information giving is even better. Don't attempt to do all of the above in the last week of the election, but at least try one of the activities. Your volunteers and fellow staffers will get a refreshing break from other campaign activities and your candidate just might win because of the youth vote in the process.

Want More?

In addition to the organizations linked to above, check out the Pink Bunnies project by Forward Montana and creative ads by New Era Colorado. Both are innovative state-based organizations targeting young voters.

For links to research and case studies visit www.youngvoterpac.org or go right to Rock the Vote and download "Young Voter Mobilization Tactics I and II." All of the guides on Rock the Vote's site highlight best practices and research by respected young voter researchers and pollsters including Celinda Lake, David Nickerson, Donald Green and Alan Gerber.

Rock the Vote & Stephen Colbert Group Register 4,000+ Voters…And Counting

The media has been touting the phenomenal growth of Stephen Colbert’s Facebook group, which was created by high school student Raj Vachhani after Colbert announced his plan to run for president in South Carolina. In a mere eight days the group boasted a million members, and is currently shooting above 1.2 million.

Aside from an amazing membership count, this pop culture phenomenon has made a real political impact: more than 4,300 members have registered to vote via the group since Vachhani added a link to Rock the Vote on Oct. 24. That’s about one registration per minute.

In fact, Rock the Vote’s online registration capability is open to everyone. Sign up for a free account to track voter registrations through your own blog or website. We’ll generate an embeddable registration form (aka “widget”) that you can customize with a logo, and you’ll even have access to the list of people you register so you can remind them to vote on Election Day.

Sound cool? Try it out. We’d love to hear your feedback, too. Of course, you can always post a simple link to our online registration page if you prefer.

Rock the Caucus

“Rock the Caucus” Launches to Mobilize Young Iowans to 2008 Caucuses

Exciting news! Today, Rock the Vote announced Rock the Caucus, our joint, nonpartisan Iowa program with Secretary of State Michael A. Mauro and Iowa PIRG’s New Voters Project.

In high schools and colleges across the state, we'll recruit students to pledge to caucus in January and to bring their friends along, too. We'll combine old-fashioned shoe leather organizing with online buzz to drive young Iowans to the poll in droves.

Check out the Rock the Caucus website: here, you can pledge to caucus, recruit your friends to pledge, join a RTV Street Team, and download toolkits for students and teachers. Let's Rock the Caucus in 2008!

From RTV's news release:
“'Across the nation, young voters turned out in large numbers in the 2004 and 2006 general elections – the first step to continuing that momentum in 2008 is mobilizing young voters in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus," said RTV Executive Director Heather Smith. “We’re thrilled to work with Iowa Secretary of State Michael A. Mauro and Iowa PIRG to tap the voting power of young adults in Iowa and continue the recent trend of growing young voter participation.'

"Young Iowans, according to recent polling, appear to be up for grabs among the leading contenders on both sides of the aisle: young Democrats are most supportive of Hillary Clinton (40%), Barack Obama (23%), and John Edwards (15%), and young Republicans are most supportive of Mitt Romney (22%) and Fred Thompson (24%), followed by Rudy Giuliani (9%), John McCain (9%), and Mike Huckabee (9%). (Rasmussen Poll, Oct. 2007) Given the fluidity of voter choice among the Iowa electorate, all candidates have ample opportunity to court young voters as the caucus nears.

“'Young people will vote if they are asked to,' said Sujatha Jahagirdar, Iowa PIRG New Voters Project Program Director. 'It’s up to the candidates to sit up, take notice, and reach out to young voters.'

"Polling from Rock the Vote finds young adults are engaged in the 2008 elections, but need to hear from candidates on top issues, including education and college affordability, jobs and the economy, health care, and Iraq. 'Young voters need to hear real answers and concrete plans this election. By hitting the pavement in Iowa, we’ll ensure that this demand is heard loudly and clearly at Caucus time,' concluded Jahagirdar."

Youth Vote Helped Swing Polish Elections

The parliamentary election in Poland this past Sunday was a great example of how a political party can benefit from working the youth vote. The heavy defeat suffered by the conservative and strongly nationalist Kaczynski has been attributed to high turnout, especially amongst young voters.

Low turnout for the 2005 election helped give victory to Kaczynskis because its most loyal supporters made sure to vote.

This time around the opposition Civic Platform with its centrist and pro-European Civic Platform made a particular effort to target younger voters as did many non-partisan groups.

In the end, more than 50 percent of 18-24-year-olds voted, not far off the overall figure of 55 percent.

To check out some of the ways Polish youth were Rocking the Vote, click here and here.

Read This: Parties Search for Fountain of Youth

Ben Adler of the Politico just posted another story about the youth vote in this election cycle. You can read it here.

More Than Icing, Young People are the Future Majority

The following post was written by Jane Fleming Kleeb.

Adam Nagourney misses an opportunity to report on important youth vote statistics and trends in his New York Times article “Will Obama Rock the Youth Vote?" Worse than Nagourney’s lack of reporting though is the Obama Campaign Manager’s comment on the importance of the youth vote to their campaign.

The misunderstanding of the increase in youth voting from 2000 to 2004 is a common mistake. Leaders in the youth vote community are used to continually fighting back the outdated message of “young people don’t vote.” The figure the media used after the 2004 election and the figure Adam uses in his article talks about young people’s share of the electorate which is currently about 17%.

Nogourney is correct; in 2004 young voters did not increase their share of the electorate from 2000 to 2004 since it would have been pretty hard to physically create more young people. By 2015 though, young people will increase their share of the electorate to over 30%. That increase has more to do with the sheer size of the Millennial generation, which is huge – over 44 million strong – and less to do with their possible future turnout. As any political campaign knows, share of the electorate does not equate turnout.

Young voters did increase their turnout in 2004, reversing a downward trend since the voting age was lowered in 1971. In 2004, over 20 million young people cast their ballots, up 4.3 million from 2000. The 11% point turnout increase among young voters was more than double that of any other age group. To give a comparison, in 2004, the number of 18-29 year old voters was 20.1 million and rivaled the number of the “reliable” voters over the age of 65 which was about 23 million.

Figures aside, I care most about Democrats who are “relying” on the youth vote for a win and then in essence say we don’t matter, that we are just “icing on the cake.”

Obama’s Campaign Manager David Plouffe’s comment about the youth vote falls right into a familiar trap. Obama’s campaign has been amazing around young voters by holding “Obama Camps” to train them how to register their peers and creating a space online for young people to share their support of the campaign. Instead of talking about all of the innovative ways young people are involved in their campaign and how young people have brought in energy and money into the campaign, Plouffe states the youth vote “is not central to our strategy. It is additive to our strategy.” Obama’s campaign is making a serious mistake here. You cannot motivate a sector of a population to their face, tell them they are the hope of the campaign and then turn around in the media and say young people are basically just icing on the cake.

Clinton’s campaign strategist Mark Penn answers the youth vote question right when he says, “there is a younger vote – and it is a significant segment. But the age structure of the Iowa caucus vote is that it is a heavy preponderance of the older voter.”

Acknowledge the power of the youth vote, acknowledge the obstacles young voters face and then target us as voters. Don’t assume just because we show up at a rally or on MySpace that we will also turn out to the polls or caucus. Just like any constituency group you have to call, knock on the doors and go to places where that group of people hangs out to talk about the issues important to them. Campaigns must use these tried and true tactics to get young people to the polls and caucus as well.

My advice to any campaign staff when asked about young voters is to try this answer instead, “of course young people are central to our strategy, just like the hundred of thousands of voters of all ages who are excited about change. Our campaign now has to make sure we are talking to young people about the issues they care about and making sure they are included in our field plans because we know if we do that they will turn out in large numbers.”

Jane Fleming Kleeb is the Executive Director of the Young Voter Pac which helps candidates and State Parties win with the 18-35 year old vote through endorsements, on-the-ground support, training, strategy and money. She is a regular on Fox and MSNBC. In her spare time, Jane is working on a cookbook for people recovering from eating disorders at http://www.eatingpolitics.com.

Young People are “Hidden Voters” and the “Icing on the Cake”…Maybe We are Unicorns Too

The following post was written by Jane Fleming Kleeb.

Young voters are not mythical unicorns; we don’t just show up out of nowhere nor do we just live in a candidate’s dreams. Any candidate who wants a young person’s vote must target us, talk to us about issues we care about and then have a field and messaging program to get us to the polls or caucus.

In a recent article on CBS.com, “Could A "Hidden" Youth Vote Propel Obama?”, old stereotypes and old political thinking shone through with every political professional interviewed.

One university professor restated old comments about young people being cynical. Over 75% of young people volunteer on a regular basis. We turned out to vote in record numbers in 2004 and 2006 with the largest increase in voting of any age group.

It is not a pipe dream that young people will show up for Obama. However, if Obama makes the same mistakes as other candidates in the past including Dean, that is assuming because we come to a rally or visit a website that we will turn out to vote, than young people may stay home (and will probably be “blamed” if Obama does lose).

However, if Obama’s campaign, or any of the candidates for that matter, target young people with the same amount of resources and time as they do any other age group or constituency group than young voters will show up.

Young voters are not “icing on the cake,” as the Iowa Democratic Party Chair describes us. We are part of the cake, just like any voter. The problem with traditional political campaigns is that they either ignore young people or look at us as window dressing, or icing, for rallies and photo shoots and then blame us for not showing up to vote. Campaigns that treat young people as voters, like Jon Tester did in Montana and like Patrick Murphy did in Pennsylvania, will get our votes.

It was never very clear to me why young people are held to a different standard. If candidates don’t pay attention to a groups of voters, that group will not show up. That is politics 101. So campaigns that are holding out “hope” that the unicorns will show up for the caucuses or primary votes are simply holding on to a dream. The campaigns that target young people as voters may just surprise everyone and win the “hidden” youth vote.

Jane Fleming Kleeb is the Executive Director of the Young Voter Pac which helps Democratic candidates and State Parties win with the 18-35 year old vote through endorsements, on-the-ground support, training, strategy and money. She is a regular on Fox and MSNBC. In her spare time, Jane is working on a cookbook for people recovering from eating disorders at http://www.eatingpolitics.com.

Old Pol, Please Learn New Tricks

The following post was written by Jane Fleming Kleeb.

We have all heard it before—young people don’t vote, they are apathetic.
David Broder’s latest article “Breaking Through to Voters” starts with this false claim and old political thinking. Seven years ago it would have been right. Then we were in the middle of a period when young people did not connect politics and their everyday lives, and consequently, didn’t vote.

Thankfully, he counters his own argument by describing young people’s increasingly active role in local Montana government. But I have to ask, why does Broder have to rely first on old stereotypes about young people nationally so as to then act shocked that young people in Montana care about politics?

Young people broke voting records for their age group in the last two elections, in 2004 and 2006, even though the media largely ignored the voting surge and even falsely reported that we didn’t come out in large numbers for Kerry in 2004. In fact, Rock the Vote’s latest polling report shows young people are paying attention to and engaged in politics at record levels, that they are optimistic, enthusiastic about civics and service, and increasingly self-identifying as Democrats.

But why should this surprise any of us, David Broder included? Especially when we realize that young people care about the same issues that any of us do—we want access to quality healthcare, we don’t want to go bankrupt in order to go to college or improve ourselves, we want good neighborhood schools for our children, and we think our nation’s security depends as much on supporting our troops at Walter Reed as it does supporting our children with SCHIP.

Most critically we worry, like Hawaii state representative Marcus Oshiro whom Broder quotes in his article, that some of our peers may be losing trust in our government. Amazingly enough though, young people continue to have faith that government can do good in our everyday lives and that, more than any other factor, continues to motivate and inspire us to stay involved – or at least keep voting.

In the end, Broder gets it absolutely right when he says “young people respond when they are treated seriously — and when their involvement in politics produces results that are real.” That is what we in the youth voting community have been arguing, and saying, and advocating for years against the dominate media message of “young people are apathetic.”

My contention with Broder comes not in his ultimate analysis that, contrary to what we the readers might think, young people do care but rather in his willingness to repeat the tired and old theme at the outset that young people do not. The bottom line is this: talk to us and we will vote; ignore us and don’t be surprised if we ignore you too.

Not surprising, this is true of all age groups, not just young people. And not surprising, this is true of all campaigns from logging in Montana to President of the United States because each of us believes, older and younger, that we still have it within us to help change the world.

Jane Fleming Kleeb is the Executive Director of the Young Voter Pac which helps Democratic candidates and State Parties win with the 18-35 year old vote through endorsements, on-the-ground support, training, strategy and money. She is a regular on Fox and MSNBC. In her spare time, Jane is working on a cookbook for people recovering from eating disorders at http://www.eatingpolitics.com.