Hardball Mangles Youth Vote with Little to No Real Data

I just got around to watching a clip of Chris Matthews' Hardball from this weekend in which he, David Gregory, Howard Fineman, Katty Kay, and a second woman whose name I missed mangled the youth vote. It was painful to seen so many "serious" people (some of whom I do actually respect) make so many mistakes with little to no data to back up their claims. Crooks and Liars has the video here.

Notable mistakes/problems in the very few minutes I was able to watch online:

• They reporters conflate Gen X and the Millennial Generation, the two living generations with the least compatible political views, and then expect to divine some truth about the political habits of "young voters."
• David Gregory says that young voters are skeptical of institutions.
• Katty Kay claimed that McCain can win on a pro-war ticket if war is in the headlines.
• Howard Fineman, in a particularly vacuous comment with no supporting data whatsoever, claimed that McCain had "that twinkle in the eye - a combination of being unpolitical and having a kick-butt mentality on security that "will appeal to a lot of kids."

Really? This is what passes for serious political discourse about young people in the political process? A bunch of 40+ year olds repeating stereotypes from the 90s and making claims about Millennial attitudes almost totally unsupported by any data?

Let me first address the one piece of data upon which the segment was based, namely, an NBC/Wall St. Journal poll that showed Obama and McCain running virtually even among young voters. Not having seen the methodology or margin of error of the poll, I can't fully comment on its accuracy, but I will say this. The poll broke out "young voters" as 18 - 35 year olds. With an age-range that broad, this poll is nothing more than a shotgun blast from a hundred yards. It's scattershot and not going to tell you much of anything useful.

Some groups, like the Young Democrats and Young Republicans do in fact break out youth using that criteria, but far more people categorize the youth vote as 18 - 29. There are actually a few very good reasons for this, particularly in this year. Young people are not monolithic. Depending on where they are at in life, they tend to have very different concerns about what issues are important. A student in college is very different from someone out of college looking for a career. A 25 year old just starting a career is very different from a 32 year old with a mortgage a spouse and a baby. Lumping these groups together tends to make polling very generic and pretty meaningless if you are looking to say something substantive about a group of people. That's why it's very useful to break out even the typical 18 - 29 "youth" polling into more specific 18 - 24 and 25 - 29 categories. Remember when Hillary beat Obama among 25 - 29 year olds in New Hampshire? When you get down to that level of detail, you tend to find more useful information.

The second, and I think more important, reason the 18 - 35 cross tab is meaningless is that it mixes two generations with diametrically opposed political views: Gen X, who are 30 - 44, and Millennials, who occupy the 18 - 29 demographic. Generation X is the most conservative generation in the electorate with the most cynical views of politics and government institutions. Millennials, on the other hand, are the most progressive age cohort in the electorate and they hold a positive view of the role of government in our lives. Mixing these two very distinct generations arbitrarily flattens the canvass, creating a distorted picture of the "youth" vote that is meaningless to anyone under the age of 50.

A new poll put out yesterday by MTV and CBS News takes the care to break out the youth vote using the 18 - 29 age bracket, and what it reveals contradicts much of what was said by Chris Matthews' panel of experts.

The MTV poll reveals that both Senators Obama and Clinton would handily defeat McCain among young voters in the general election. Sen. Obama would do so by 13 ponts (52/39 Obama), and Sen. Clinton by 10 points (51/41 Clinton). These numbers hold up in almost all situations. The one area in which McCain is actually competitive among young people is among men when running against Senator Clinton:

Regarding Katty Kay's comment about McCain "winning on the war," I don't think young voters would agree. According to the polling, the economy is the greatest concern of young voters at the moment, far more than the war. This represents a shift in conern among young people from this time last year, and on the issue of the economy, young people think that McCain isn't paying enough attention and just doesn't care about them:

Much of this data is backed up by previously polling completed by Rock the Vote in February. Contrary to Howard Fineman's gut feeling, or the fact that, yes, some young people do in fact work for John McCain (they're called young Republicans), the Millennials as a generation will not take a shine to the twinkle in McCain's eye. Nor will a generation of multilateralists who oppose the Iraq war care much for McCain's "kick-butt" attitude.

This is a prime example as to why we need more young voices in the media. All do respect to Gregory, Fineman, Kay, and other long-serving journalists who have spent years covering the political scene, they are just not up to speed on what is happening with the youth vote. I can think of a dozen people under 35 who could stand toe to toe with Gregory or Fineman and who actually know their shit when it comes to the youth vote. Why aren't we seeing these faces on MSNBC, CNN or Fox News with any regularity?

Better PR and cable/network news booking is a huge hole in the youth movement. We have lots of talented folk among us who can read polls and know what is happening on the ground. It's time we got them on TV, which, despite growing use of the web, is still the #1 place where Americans, and young voters, get their political news.