What If We Stopped Expending Field Resources on Seniors?

In conversation, the President of one of YDA's state chapters raised a really interesting question: What would happen if campaigns stopped putting money into the senior vote and redirected that to youth?

It's a provocative question. Campaigns tend to spend no money on young people "because youth don't vote," and they expend a large share of resources reaching out to the "reliable" senior vote. When you think about it, it's a little ass-backwards. Voting is a habit and seniors tend to be full-on addicts in their turnout rates. If we stopped spending money reaching out to them and encouraging them to get to the polls, would they turnout anyway? Probably. It seems highly unlikely they would quite voting cold turkey. Couldn't that money be better spent reaching out to people whose voting habits are not so "reliable" and whose partisanship is still up for grabs?

It's not an all or nothing proposition. You don't need to stop spending ALL money on seniors, but perhaps adjusting the proportion spent on seniors and that spent on young people might yield better returns on investment overall? What would happen if half the money spent robo-calling, direct mailing, and door-knocking seniors went to contacting young people?

Conversely, if we did see a big drop-off in senior turnout under such a campaign, doesn't that speak to the importance of doing outreach to ALL demographics? If less resources and contacts means a smaller senior vote, the same is true of young voters. You can't claim they're unreliable and not worth resources if the very act of withholding resources is what drives down their turnout numbers . . .

It would be interesting to run this as a field experiment in a super-safe Democratic seat. I don't think we will, but it would be a good piece of data to have.