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Expanding the youth vote: myth or reality?
by Jon Henke | November 15, 2008 at 2:26 PM
Chris Cilliza argues there were 5 myths about the 2008 election. However, on #2, I'm not sure the data necessarily supports his conclusion...
2. A wave of black voters and young people was the key to Obama's victory.
Afraid not. ... Exit polling suggests that there was no statistically significant increase in voting among either group. Black voters made up 11 percent of the electorate in 2004 and 13 percent in 2008, while young voters comprised 17 percent of all voters in 2004 and 18 percent four years later.
The surge in young and African American voters is not entirely the stuff of myth, however. Although their percentages as a portion of the electorate didn't increase measurably, Obama did seven points better among black voters than Sen. John F. Kerry did in 2004 and scored a 13-point improvement over Kerry's total among young voters.
The flat total turnout, but higher margin of victory among young voters could tell us one of two things.
- The wave was a myth: The youth vote was the same, but they swung to Obama. The composition changed by persuasion.
- The wave was a reality: The youth vote likely to vote for McCain stayed home, while a wave of new young voters turned out for Obama. The composition changed by differences in enthusiasm, ground game and coalition expansion.
If #2 is correct, it implies these Obama voters are not persuadable swing voters, but a new generation of likely Democratic voters. That will be a far harder barrier for Republicans to overcome in the long term.
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Comments
A Churchill Acceleration Plan for 18 to 29 year old voters
Jon,
The wave was a reality. It will be difficult, but not impossible, to change the 2012 voting results for the 18 to 29 age group from more than 2 to 1 for Obama to an even split.
Remember, though, the wisdom of Winston Churchill's famous quote:
"If you're not a liberal when you're twenty, you don't have a heart.
If you're not a conservative when you're forty, you don't have a brain."
http://www.michaelpatrickleahy.com
Sour grapes
The “young skulls full of mush” explanation doesn’t cut it this time. That was my initial reaction, too. But this year there was an especially large shift in the youth vote towards Obama. We can either be honest about why we lost the youth vote or bury our heads in the sand. Let’s be honest. Some obvious factors:
1-Age. Obama is young, McCain is old. Young people identify more with Obama. This also explains why McCain did so well with older voters.
2-Money. Obama outspent McCain by a huge margin. Much as Democrats don’t want to admit it, effective youth marketing was a factor in this campaign.
3-History. More so than any previous generation, 18-29 year olds were raised to “celebrate diversity”. We like the idea of electing the first black president.
4-War. In the 20th century, anti-war activists have focused on the young.
5-Change. The incumbent Republican is not popular. The “McSame” meme was completely dishonest, but it worked. Younger voters don’t see McCain as the heir to Reagan & Goldwater. They see him in the context of the Bush presidency.
6-Money. Will Social Security still be available when we retire? We’re being told that our best career prospects involve changing diapers for aging baby-boomers. To add insult to injury, previous generations have become rich by selling us real estate at exorbitant prices.
(BTW-I completely agree that individual responsibility would have prevented the housing bubble. I was responsible & am able to cash in on the current situation.)
Good news is that
1-GOP has plenty of younger presidential candidates for 2012.
2-The current campaign finance system is completely discredited.
3-Obama no longer has history on his side.
4-Democrats will not whip up anti-war sentiment with a Democrat commander-in-chief.
5-Bush is mostly irrelevant.
6-Democrats are now responsible for the economy. They will naturally overreach & screw some things up (see George Miller on 401k contributions).
Taking off my partisan hat, I sincerely hope Democrats can fix the economy. But the current housing situation is not solely the fault of George W. Bush. Bush deserves some of the blame. But this goes all the way back through Clinton, Reagan & Carter.
Democrats, please let me know if I’m being unfair to my fellow young voters. I don’t think young voters are shallow or stupid. I think we vote for selfish reasons, just like middle-age & elderly voters.
the current housing situation is not the problem
Greenspan's free money irresponsibility and lack of regulation has created a shadowmarket that is worth more than the entire world's GDP.
Credit Default Swaps.
Clinton, Reagan and Carter really weren't much of a part of this, other than helping create the bullshit economy run by bullshit money that doesn't really exist (and if you really must, blame Nixon for taking us off the gold standard -- though I wouldn't.). I don't want to talk one more red word about Fanny Mae.
Churchill was wrong
People vote the way that they learned in the younger years. People do not switch. And based upon the incompetence of most Repulbican politicians, more people will keep swtiching to the Democrats to get away from politicains who are too stupid to understand what they read in the newspaper.
I hope you're wrong
I really hope you are wrong saying that people dont switch. If a person doesnt have the senese to be able to rationally analyze an issue using not just their own interests then we are doomed. I can tell you one group that does switch. Women who marry and have families. The nurturing and emotional human nature of single women often leads them to a democratic solution, until the have a family of their own.
I dont get your last comment about what they read in the newspapers and switching to Dems. Since most newpapers are blatantly left leaning i think you just shot your idea in the foot. If they are too stupid to discern the leftist bent of the media, then yes they will remain and continue to vote against their country's own interest.
I think the point is that
people are much more likely to stick with the party they first voted for. So say 70% of this year's new Obama voters stay Dem then you are losing significant chunks of the electorate every four years. Getting first time voters to swing your way locks down a large percentage of them, and is an advantage Republicans chose to cede when they didn't care about environmental or education issues (as a for instance).
As for the newspaper thing, the author isn't directly talking about newspapers (be they left leaning or otherwise) so much as referring to the fact that politicians within the GOP are ignoring information that is easily available to them.
Why not both?
Both #1 and #2 may be a real factor, IMO. Whether it's half and half, 60-40, 70-30, etc. I don't know.
Churchill may be true in general. Or he may be half right. Again, the options aren't exclusive: maybe half of people tend to vote the same as they age while the other half are more persuadable.
According to exit polls, the youth vote slid 25 points (!!) from 2004 to 2008. Some of that may have been persuasion, so it's _possible_ you could see some of it undone in 2012 if there is a strong GOP candidate that speaks to young voters' concerns. But that seems very unlikely.
Another thing to keep in mind with the group of 18-29 year-olds is that every four years at least 37% of them are first-time voters in a presidential election.
So, think of the teens you know right now who are ages 14-18. Can you envision a significant nuber of them voting for a Republican in 4 years, given the party's existing message? I don't see it happening.
2016 I won't speculate about....too many things could happen between now and then. But if you want a Republican in the white house, 2016 is the year you should be thinking about unless the Dems royally fuck things up (i.e. as bad as Bush Republicanism). Don't hold your breath on that...
Bush Republicanism?
The main failure of the Bush Administration was that they acted like democrats in ridiculously overspending, not securing the border, and not apologizing for their mistakes.
And with the talk of putting back the ban on drilling i think the Dems are well on their way of royally f-ing things up.
Unfortunately
Could have used that insight before selecting George W. Bush as the candidate in 2000.
Now that we have eight years of fiscal mismanagement, security failures, incompetence and corruption, it's hard to say they're "acting like Democrats" unless someone had pointed that out while it was going on. All that stuff took place with the acquiescence of the entire GOP, until it lost the election. Suddenly all the stuff no one minded when it was taking place becomes "acting like Democrats," maybe because until recently Democrats had become so good at losing elections. Clinton balanced the budget and left W. with a surplus, so fiscal mismanagement does not fall into the category of "acting like Democrats." As far as "not apologizing," find me a politician of any stripe who ever has done so without being forced to.
Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. All that finger pointing would have been chest-thumping and claims of credit if McCain had won the election.
Well made points
Republicans under Bush have worked long and hard to tarnish the brand that used to shine during the 80's and 90's, and simply ascribing certain behaviors to Democrats is to pretend that the public will ignore the fact that they are practices used over and over again by the party in power (Republicans) over the past 8 years. People know that Bush doubled the deficit, that America's dominance as an economic power has come under threat at the end of his term (and will credit him with that whether it was his fault or not), and they know that Bush has enacted the largest government hand out program that our nation has ever seen.
Trying to label Democrats as socialists and big spenders after these actions isn't going to fool anyone, the Republican party is going to have to practice less rhetoric and more action before they restore credability with voters.
There have been plenty of
There have been plenty of blogs on the right, and other pundits who railed against the fical excesses of the Bush administration. If you weren't there you wouldn't have heard it because the mainstream media didn't cover that debate.
We are ideologically opposed
We are ideologically opposed to big government, but that doesn't mean there isn't a right way and a wrong way to go about it.
Say what you want about Democrats, but IF you are going to have a big government, they're the people you want to run it relativly competently. (because if the Bush years are any indicator, anti-intellectual Republicans suck at it. This is why the possibility "President George W. Palin" scared some of us shitless.)'
If you think a ban on drilling which will reduce our supply of oil about 3% ten years from now is a royal fuck up comparable to -- oh, just about anything Bush has fucked up -- you're pretty seriously deluded...
"Drill, baby, drill!" is a great slogan for one of the political conventions that amount to a carnival atmosphere, but as serious policy it's pretty insignificant.
conservative drilling policy
should be to preserve our oil until everyone else runs out of it -- and then we profit like bandits.
as opposed to clinton
whose first act upon getting into the white house was to tighten border patrols.
This is me rolling my eyes at you. Big Business wants free worker/slaves in their sweatshops. The enemy is big business, not democrats nor republicans but their backers.
My thoughts.
Obama ran an impressive and more optimistic campaign -- plain and simple.
Young people like vision, idealism and a message that says our best days are ahead. Look at how Reagan won the youth and look at how Obama won the youth -- same deal: vision, idealism, America's best days are ahead.
Young people are also very brand conscious and the Obama campaign knew this. They sold Obama like a pair of jeans complete with logo and adverstising. Everywhere I went I would see young people wearing this brand -- whether it was a bumpersticker, a t-shirt, jewelry, mugs, stickers etc. etc. ad nauseum.
Every news-based website -- right down to Drudge -- had a smiling Obama ad asking people to make history, to join the movement and to donate or volunteer.
Obama was a fad and a successful fad at that. He was new, trendy and modern. He also wasn't one of those snake-handling, warmongering and backward Republicans that you hear about on Jon Stewart's show or Stephen Colbert's show. He certainly wasn't that old man who was more interested in naming names and waving his little black sharpie pen around while shouting pork spending over and over again. Obama had a vision, message and enough money and media power to hammer every demographic, open up campaign offices and equip an army of dedicated and enthused volunteers.
It is my only hope that the higher-ups -- the Party bosses, consultants, media-gurus, etc -- learn from the lessons of the Obama campaign and one up him.
I profoundly disagree with
I profoundly disagree with Churchill's comment. Although it does make sense, we should not accept that as the trend. The truth that the uninformed voter especially amongst young folks heavily swayed democratic outlines the failures of the Bush administration and the Repub party being able to sell their ideas. All they have to do is use history to support them and they cant even do that.
Big, *BIG* Mistake
Don't assume the youth vote was "low-information", they weren't. In addition to getting to grow up in the world of No Child Gets Ahead fucking the schools up, seeing how student loans have become a form of debt peonage first-hand, and having far closer relationships to Iraqi Vet's than 90% of the rest of us, as they watch their childhood friends come home with missing bits and haunted eyes, they were paying *attention* the last 8 years, and they were too young to have been shocked the way we were by 9-11, it was just part of their background. Obama's college organizers probably know more about political theory, history, and practice than 99% of bloggers on either ideological wing, and they're only a *little* better informed than their high-school equivalents.
Who signs the Social Contract? What was the "Bonus Army"? Who were the Wide Awakes and their equivalents in the Old South, and what relation did they have to the Civil War, and what modern right-wing group took their name from the southern version? Why is every form of ideology openly practiced in the US except for SoCon some form of Liberalism, and why is it an exception?
My teen-aged daughter knows the answers to those questions, and why they're relevant. These kids are not liberal because Obama is cool, they're liberal because they believe reality has a well-known liberal bias, and the GOP doesn't seem to care.
well, I didn't know about the wide awakes
but now i do! thanks!
Churchill is irrelevant
Even if voters do get more conservative as they get older that could reflect that they stay the same while society gets moreliberal or any number of issues.
Also, what does it matter if voters are conservative if they can be repeatedly persuaded into voting for liberals/socialists?
Most studies show that if young voters vote for the same party at least two or three times in a row they will probably vote that way the rest of their life, barring some massive event like 1980/1994/2006/2008.
That means that if John Kerry got 54% of the youth vote in 2004, then those same youth have probably voted the same in 2008 (66% of youth), if not 2006 as well. So over half the population is ALREADY conditioned to voting for Dems. That does not count the incoming youth that are 14-17 years old right now or the youth that voted for teh first time and have a stake in reelecting Obama in 2012 as well.
There is a lot of analysis of the problem with youth on this website and no real solutions. What is the bottom line? What is the point?
Vote trends and shifts
Two interesting / related post-election articles on the Texas GOP website ...
GOP Needs a Compelling Vision
Thursday, November 13, 2008, By: Ken Blackwell
History Favors Republicans in 2010
Thursday, November 13, 2008, By: Karl Rove
Rove showed that a lot of Obama's vote increase was in minority groups:
Rove also pointed out that many of the GOP base voters stayed home:
Ken Blackwell put it this way:
The first and second points line up - voters DO shift, that's how an electorate that voted for Bush voted for Obama - made possible by 4 million less GOP turnout, shifting of some voters (in particular minority voters) to Obama, and increased Democratic turnout.
We will need a SHARP, SMART, PRINCIPLED, CONSERVATIVE LEADERS who can reach out to YOUTH, MINORITIES, URBAN/SUBURBAN VOTERS, CATHOLICS, as well as traditional GOP groups.
The point by Aaron Marks on the libertarian orientation is well-noted. The Ron Paul campaign got signficant traction among youg voters, and they are a source of well-need 'fresh energy' for the party that should be tapped into. As Obama and the left-liberal Democrat Congress rolls out more and more spending, more bailouts, attacks on secret ballots for union elections, fairness doctrine, health care mandates etc., we can use these opposition to these issues to reclaim the pro-freedom limited govt mantle.
opposition = pro-freedom?
If the Republican leadership agrees with you that being an obstructionist minority in opposition to the Dems will brighten their future or their image in the eyes of the voters (remember that a majority of voters voted for Obama and havea stake in him now) then 2010 will be the 3rd consecutive disaster.
And do you really believe Ken Blackwell when he says America is still a center-right nation? Losing a presidential race by 8.5 million votes should put an end to that type of discussion. Or that Dems picked up 12-14 Senate seats and 51 House seats in 2 elections.
And reaching out to youth, minorities, urban voters and catholics isn't just about having better leaders. The perception (or composition) of Republicans in general needs to change - no more bigotry, hatred, or disdain for education. May I remind you all that the trend is moving AWAY from Republiacns at the moment. We aren't just talking about pushing a stagnant electorate, it is much much harder to reverse a trend.
it's easier to reverse a trend
do something splashy that makes everyone reevaluate who you are.
But, honestly, the real problem is the Balkanization of America by way of Culture War. And that's not the liberals fault (how much of it is the southern strategy, I'm not qualified to discuss)
Republicans need ability and not just ideas
Who cares what new ideas that the Republicans have in the next few years. The will not be able to implement any of them. As if the last few years are any indications, they will never implement any of them.
Republicans are still convinced that they can win elections based upon gimmciks and niche marketing when the majority of Americans have decided that Republicans are incompetents who cannot run anything and are too stupid, too lazy, and too entitled to make anything of meaning occur.
Blowing Smoke
Rove and Blackwell are blowing smoke up your butt. In Ohio, GOP turnout was down, that may be because the ground game was concentrated in Ohio in '04, or it may be because there were observers from the SoS and Democrats in all those red counties that had such...creative, counting methods last time.
If you want to rebuild the right into an honest opposition, you have to stop believing the bullshit the party apparatchiks shovel at you. In IN, NC, VA, CO, and NV, McCain got more votes than Bush did in '04, and Obama blew right past him. In a few more states, notably GA, AL, MS, ND, MT, McCain got 90-120% of Bush's count and managed to hold on. In every state that wasn't contested by either side, GOP participation fell dramatically, blue states got bluer and red states started shading towards purple, and that's where you lost that 4M off the national popular vote. Hell, you nearly lost MO, because where McCain slipped less than 10K from Bush, Obama surged more than 180K. By 2016, *Texas* will be a battleground state, and most of the current 65+ demographic that's keeping you from total humiliation will have shuffled off this mortal coil.
I started out a conservative, now I realize that was just a label Reagan marketed to me in my youth and there's no such thing as "ideological conservatism", just a grab bag of slogans the market testing they did back in the 70's found played well with the low-info types.
Face some facts: Your leadership is completely bankrupt intellectually and morally. They don't just lie to you for convenience, they lie by *reflex*. The cold bitter truth is that Obama won the ground game and the netroots won the air war, and they have absolutely no idea how to respond except by playing the same strategy they did against Clinton. Except Obama's read their playbook, and he's not going to let the GOP control the pacing or the agenda.
And you're not going to fix your problems in 2 years, or 4, or even 8. You might be able to patch together one more winning cycle in 2016, with the right candidate, the right circumstances, enough desperation in the base, and an even faster and looser approach to elections law than the Rovian standard. But the powers that be in your party don't need your help to do that, and wouldn't know how to use it if they did.
You have three choices: Start laying plans to wrest control of the GOP from the theocons, mercenaries, and opportunists, after they've exhausted themselves and discredited the GOP brand as thoroughly as Hoover did, then wait 15-20 years for the Democrats to get lazy and corrupt again; Follow your leadership, and hope for one last chance to cash in on the gravy train of speaking circuits and book clubs before it all comes crashing down; Or, give up on the GOP, become a Blue Dog Democrat, the last place left to be an honest, unashamed, and *sane* conservative.
Feingold's worth ten of the blue dogs
in terms of conservatism. FISA, Patriot act, need i go on?
The real problem for the GOP is that the old school Republican party from the Midwest decided to take over the democratic party. And they've done a good job of infusing the Democrats with pragmatism
A "Youth Voter" Responding to Jon's Commentary
Jon, you raise some very important points in your commentary here. However, I do not believe that if #2 is the case, young voters necessarily represent a new generation of likely Democrat voters. I address my rationale for this at length at NextGenGOP: http://www.nextgengop.com/2008/11/15/winning-back-the-youth-vote/
- Aaron Marks
Youf Voter Here
The same sceloritic arthritic demented voters raised during the Great Depression did not bat an eye in sustaining conservatism since Reagan. When people age, priorities change pure and simple. AFAIK, the only main difference between young voters and older voters now are views regarding on a select few social issues. We have a youth population less inclined to support free-for-all abortions, illegal immigration, racial preferences, political correctness, oh, and have less sex, take less drugs and alcohol than their predecessors. Take away Bush's mishandling of the economy, and you got yourself a demographic that's about as a lock for Democratic voters as Florida.
You're dreaming
Reagan Democrats are *dying*. They weren't the people who faced the Depression, but the slightly younger cohort of WW2 and Korea. They're old now, and there are fewer every year.
Do not base your assessment of the "youth vote" on the students of Liberty or Regents, or the members of your College Republicans chapter. The real "Right/Left" split in the youth vote is between the Libertarians and the Social Democrats, they are actually less split over Abortion and Gays than Democrats at large (they believe Abortion is a right as well as a choice, and Gays are fabulous!), and break from them on identity politics because they see it as a worn out argument that stopped being meaningful before they born.
And if you think they're having less sex, it's because you don't understand their definition of "sex".
less premarital sex
more videogames!
(seriously, doesn't everyone know that in rural places where there is nothign to do, teens fuck like wild rabbits?)
What changes should be made in the platform, Aaron?
In your article you suggested "rethinking the Republican Party's platform". What changes in the platform do you think would be better serve the GOP in regards to capturing the youth vote?
Changes to GOP Platform to Win Back the Youth Vote
Punchenko, thanks for the question. I just finished up a blog entry addressing this question at: http://www.nextgengop.com/2008/11/17/winning-back-the-youth-vote-part-2/
- Aaron Marks, NextGenGOP.com
This topic is called overanalyzing.
"If you're not a liberal when you're young, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative when you're old, you have no brain."
I cut and pasted this from elsewhere and it sums up my feelings on this issue. You think young voters going for Obama is a surprise? Most do not follow politics with the intensity that we do so they're going to pay attention to the big ticket items such as the war in Iraq and the election of a first black President and... not much else. A vote for Obama does not represent a vote for his ideas. Besides, young people are always liberals no matter what decade we're in; I don't see why most conservative commentators don't pick up on this.
1. McCain could not have
1. McCain could not have beaten Gore in 2000.
2. Churchill will be irrelevant only when the U.K. and the U.S. cease to exist.
You are so right.
Churchill was a man for his time. He teaches valuable lessons to this day. As for McCain, this loser is only interested in bipartisanship. It is his religion, betraying his party for media approval is his calling card. It is shame that, the media, with the help of Democrat and independent crossover voters in those early open primaries picked our candidate instead of the base. Lets hope we can rectify that problem by 2012.