Securing the Bottom Line

A new bit of research from EMILY's List was released today that shows some details about new registrants and down ballot candidates.

According to their research

"Of the 326,823 newly registered (this year) voters in North Carolina, 176,806 are registered Democrats, just 21,672 are registered Republicans."

But when it comes to down ballot races there is a bit of a disconnect

"65 percent of younger people believe whoever is elected President will make “a lot of difference” in their lives; this number drops to 32 when asked about Governor and 26 percent when asked about Congress"

As such, the research says we risk serious drop off from these new voters for a complete lack of connectivity between them. I don't see any surprises. Thursday I walked around the hill in DC and asked members of Congress about young voters. The video is to come, but Rep. Tim Ryan, one of the youngest members of Congress said it best when he told me that before he ran, young voters didn't really turnout much. But when he ran he made a point to talk to young voters and made a concerted effort to do outreach to young voters. The result? SURPRISE! Youth turnout increased.

If you build it... they will come...

EMILY's List commissioned two pairs of focus groups among young voters in NC. The release says they

"measured the potential impact of various approaches to encourage down ballot voting including (1) linking other candidates to Obama, selling them on the notion that every leader needs a “team” behind him, (2) probing their support for straight party ticket voting, and (3) exploring more comparative approaches where we attack Bush and his downballot allies and remind these voters that Bush may be gone, but his ideas and policies could outlive his administration."

No word on if they thought about maybe just doing more outreach to young voters directly from the local candidates....

The results show, among other things, that "people resist the idea of casting an uninformed vote." This is consistent with our research that shows that the voters paying the most attention also tend to be the most involved.

Further, "straight party ticket voting is not attractive for many in the groups." This is consistent with our research that showed that young people don't find the party system an attractive option in general, which is why new registrants tend to like to be independent or decline to state if given those option. I don't know if these are ok in North Carolina.

"Young people do understand that the other offices are important and have a greater direct impact on their lives. However, this is not a top-of-mind perception among many participants in our groups. As noted above, they know almost nothing about other candidates running for statewide office. . . further, young people understand implicitly that Barack Obama needs a “team” and needs allies down ballot to change the country "

There's more but it goes on for several pages. One of my favorite tid bits was this "Almost everyone in the groups belongs to a social networking site, mostly “Facebook,” and “MySpace,” but they tend to ignore ads on the sites."

I reiterate that the #1 way for candidates to garner youth support this election is to do active outreach on social network sites, with youth targeted field outreach, and candidate outreach. If you or a candidate you know would like to learn how, don't hesitate to contact us.