Brain Drain and the Importance of Non-College Youth in the Pennsylvania Primary

Updated to more specifically define "non-college" youth.

After a six-week lull, voting in the Democratic Primary picks up again tomorrow, this time in Pennsylvania, where the Obama campaign is looking for a win (or something close to a tie) in order to slam the door on the candidacy of Sen. Clinton, the success of which is looking more and more unlikely with each passing contest and Super Delegate endorsement.

As in all previous states, youth turnout tomorrow will surely rise well above levels from 2000 or 2004. With such high stakes on the line, it may even double or triple. I would love to be able to say that such increased turnout among young voters will be the key to an Obama win, but the deck seems stacked against such a possibility.

On paper, the math would seem to be good. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) (pdf), young voters (18 - 29) make up 21% of the eligible electorate in Pennsylvania, or just under 2 million voters. That's about average. Pennsylvania is a big college state, though, and 23% of those young voters are college students, a group which votes in high numbers for Sen. Obama. According to a CBS Newswire poll, PA students support Sen. Obama over Sen. Clinton 71 - 29%.

In the demographically similar state of Ohio, Obama lost to Clinton 54 - 44%. In that contest, young people made up 16% of the Democratic Electorate. Obama will need young voters to make up a much greater share of the electorate tomorrow if he is to overcome Clinton, who has typically held the lead in polling results.

But here's the rub. This campaign was supposed to be over on Super Tuesday. No one thought the two Democratic candidates would still be duking it out in March, let alone April. This has consequences.

As Ben Adler reported in the Politico, the Obama campaign didn't begin voter registration efforts on campuses until late February, and once they did, those efforts ran smack into one of the hazards of student organizing: spring break. During the final weeks of voter registration, most students were away on a beach or at home with their family. Mix in the fact that many students, thinking the contest would never get this far, decided to vote absentee in their home states, and you have a recipe for lower than average student turnout in a state with a higher than average student population.

There is one factor that could change this equation, and that is an increase in turnout from "non-college" youth, or young people with no college experience. As reported by CIRCLE earlier this year, non-college youth, despite comprising a slightly higher percentage of the eligible youth vote, are turning out in far lower numbers than their college-attending and college-educated peers. On Super Tuesday, non-college youth comprised a rather dismal 21% of all young voters (pdf). This, despite the fact that non-college youth make up slightly more than half of the youth population nationwide.

Both the Clinton and Obama campaigns recognize this, and are reaching out to non-college youth, but the work is much harder than engaging students. Non-college youth are not clumped together geographically around a campus, and are thus harder to target. Because many of these "other" young voters are working jobs, in the military, or struggling to start families, they also tend to have very different policy concerns than their college-educated peers, making it a challenge for the campaigns to speak to and engage them.

If Obama can narrow the gap slightly among other constituencies (like white working class men), then a big bump in turnout among these non-college youth could turn the youth vote into a decisive factor in tomorrow's election. This is a long shot, but not outside the realm of possibility as non-college youth have received special attention in Pennsylvania not only from the campaigns but from outside organizations as well.

In the last year - and in particular the last six weeks - Russell Simmon's nonprofit, the Hip Hop Summit Action Network - has been on the ground targeting under-served communities and communities of color, to educate, register, and get young people out to vote. Working in partnership with PowerPAC and the NAACP, the group claims to have registered 120,000 young Pennsylvanians since January.

Tomorrow will be the test of the effectiveness of those efforts. If non-college youth turnout in greater numbers than they have in previous contests, then Obama just might pull this off, or at least keep it close enough to deny Clinton the momentum she needs to continue. If not, we're headed to North Carolina, Indiana, and maybe all the way to the convention.