Results from our member survey

A few weeks back we sent a brief survey out to Rock the Vote members to get your input on our 2009 plans. If you haven't responded yet you can still contribute your thoughts.

We've received thousands of responses so far and the results were both surprising and encouraging. When broadly asked what areas you were interested in, more than half (58%) said they wanted to get involved in issue advocacy. Service opportunities (like the National Day of Service) came in second with 41%, followed by election-related reminders at 36%. Our assumption had been that since most of our members joined when registering to vote, the election-related reminders would top the list by far and only a small group would be interested in advocacy. Instead we saw that all the energy during election season has shifted into making real political progress in Congress. With such high interest in advocating for change we're excited to set up more opportunities to pass legislation (like our success on veterans' voting rights back in September).

We also received some interesting results on what policies you wanted to work on. Jobs and the economy was the clear winner with 81% wanting to work on related issues - no surprise given the current state of the economy and its relevance to young voters (MSNBC). Health care was next with 70% of our members expressing interest, then the evironment at 63%. While lower on the list, more than half wanted to work on Iraq and international affairs (54%). And finally election reform came in with 32% interested; we will be sure to enlist your support as we press for automatic voter registration and other common sense ways to fix our election system.

The comments gave us your specific feedback on RTV's future programs, and we read each one. Here's a quick sample of what you said:

Michael G: "Getting the youth educated on local elections, and the 2010 midterm elections."

Similarly, Jeffrey F: "Keep the pressure on young voters to participate in local and midterm elections. The president is only one person...we have more power than that."

Foster R: "I'd like to see the paradigm of industry change completely within the next four years in response to climate change. Whether it's through carbon credits or simply stricter standards, we need to have solved this already."

Hilary W: "Pressure people to register to vote before the deadline. Lots of my friends missed the deadlines and I was so frustrated at that! We just need to be more active in telling young people about deadlines and how important it is."

Jennifer B: "I would like more information on the candidates running for office in my area - such as their voting background, issues they support, issues they are against, etc."

Melanie O: "Number one on my list right now is health care. It is not a privilege to have access to health care and not have to worry about bankruptcy to cover its costs. Health care is a basic right and should be such in this country."

Gimone H: "Making college more affordable. Press Obama to enact his plan for $4000 a year every year for 100 hours work. Make colleges use their endowments-- from Hillary's plan. Student loan payments to depend on income remainder forgiven after 25 years. "

Finally, to look at your feedback another way, we made a Wordle cloud to visualize the most common words. Check it out:



Thanks for all the great comments, and get ready for more updates in the coming weeks.