Young People are “Hidden Voters” and the “Icing on the Cake”…Maybe We are Unicorns Too

Jane Fleming Kleeb is the Executive Director of the Young Voter Pac which helps Democratic candidates and State Parties win with the 18-35 year old vote through endorsements, on-the-ground support, training, strategy and money. She is a regular on Fox and MSNBC. In her sparetime, Jane is working on a cookbook for people recovering from eating disorders at http://www.eatingpolitics.com.

Young voters are not mythical unicorns; we don’t just show up out of nowhere nor do we just live in a candidate’s dreams. Any candidate who wants a young person’s vote must target us, talk to us about issues we care about and then have a field and messaging program to get us to the polls or caucus.

In a recent article on CBS.com, “Could A "Hidden" Youth Vote Propel Obama?”, old stereotypes and old political thinking shone through with every political professional interviewed.

One university professor restated old comments about young people being cynical. Over 75% of young people volunteer on a regular basis. We turned out to vote in record numbers in 2004 and 2006 with the largest increase in voting of any age group.

It is not a pipe dream that young people will show up for Obama. However, if Obama makes the same mistakes as other candidates in the past including Dean, that is assuming because we come to a rally or visit a website that we will turn out to vote, than young people may stay home (and will probably be “blamed” if Obama does lose).

However, if Obama’s campaign, or any of the candidates for that matter, target young people with the same amount of resources and time as they do any other age group or constituency group than young voters will show up.

Young voters are not “icing on the cake,” as the Iowa Democratic Party Chair describes us. We are part of the cake, just like any voter. The problem with traditional political campaigns is that they either ignore young people or look at us as window dressing, or icing, for rallies and photo shoots and then blame us for not showing up to vote. Campaigns that treat young people as voters, like Jon Tester did in Montana and like Patrick Murphy did in Pennsylvania, will get our votes.

It was never very clear to me why young people are held to a different standard. If candidates don’t pay attention to a groups of voters, that group will not show up. That is politics 101. So campaigns that are holding out “hope” that the unicorns will show up for the caucuses or primary votes are simply holding on to a dream. The campaigns that target young people as voters may just surprise everyone and win the “hidden” youth vote.