Just How Many Barack-Stars Are There? Really.

The interwebs were abuzz this week about a memo released by David Plouffe, Campaign Manager for Barack Obama: Enthusiasm and Organization, The Path to the Nomination.

In part, the memo focuses on the role of young voters in the Obama campaign's strategy, particularly in Iowa. Plouffe makes many cogent points about the youth vote that are frequently glossed over in media coverage of young voters: polls under-represent young voters because they are less likely to have a landline, less likely to have voted previously (and thus fail "likely voter" screens in most polls), and they are less likely to be home in the evening, when pollsters make their calls. Plouffe cited these hurdles as major factors in under-representing the Obama campaign's strength in the first-in-the-nation caucus, and boasts about Obama's strength among young voters. He concludes:

So all of these state and national surveys have and will continue to under-represent Barack’s core support – in effect, his hidden vote in each of these pivotal early states. Of course, there are organizational challenges associated with maximizing this support, but we are heavily focused on that task.

On the web, Plouffe's memo was picked up by a variety of media outlets. Marc Ambinder bought into Plouffe's narrative hook, line, and sinker. At The Nation, Cora Currier, a young blogger, expressed doubt about the viability of a strategy that relied on young voters, yet she also accepted at face value Plouffe's claim that young voters overwhelmingly supported Obama. The Washington Post expressed more skepticism, citing similar arguments by Howard Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, in 2003 and 2004.

While any polling expert will tell you that Plouffe is right - polls almost always underestimate young voters unless they are random-digit-dial or hybrid polls which include web and cell phone users - no one seems to have questioned his basic claim, that "In more than one survey, Barack’s support among Iowa young voters exceeded the support of all the other candidates combined."

This is highly doubtful. National polling that focuses solely on young voters do consistently show Barack with a lead over the field, but that lead is hardly dominating. The latest polling summary (pdf) by Rock the Vote, which pulls data from polls by Democracy Corps and RT Strategies, shows Barack with a slim, 4% lead over Clinton, and when first and second choices were combined, it was Clinton who held a 10% lead among young voters.

National polls are not necessarily an accurate predictor of what is going on the ground in Iowa, so I called the campaign to confirm their sources. Staffers in both the national and Iowa offices were only able to direct me to one poll to back up Plouffe's assertion, a survey conducted in late July by the Washington Post and ABC News. That poll, however, did not screen participants for age, and nothing in the publicly available results indicated that Obama enjoys more support among young Iowans, let along more support than all other candidates combined.

At the end of the day, Plouffe may turn out to be right. Anecdotal evidence (rallies, etc.) show a lot of enthusiasm among Iowa youth for the Obama campaign. Yet it appears that Plouffe is playing fast and loose with his polling data, over representing youth and their support for Barack, even as he criticizes pollsters for under-representing young voters. Neither is particularly good for young voters or the electoral process.

It remains to be seen just how many Barack-Stars there really are in Iowa, something we won't know for sure until January 14th.