The Enigma of Hillary's Youth Campaign

After months of ignoring the youth vote, the Clinton campaign has had a busy week in which it was at the center of the youth vote narrative in our political media.

First there was the release of some new polling data, most of which confirmed Hillary's upward trend and lead over the other candidates among voters between 18 - 29 years of age:

National
Rock the Vote/Sacred Heart (MoE +/- 5%), November 1st
Hillary Clinton: 54%
Barack Obama: 24%
John Edwards: 8.4%

New Hampshire
Saint Anselm - New Hampshire Institute of Politics, October 25
Hillary Clinton: 45%
Barack Obama 20%
John Edwards: 10%

Iowa*
Rasmussen , October 17
Hillary Clinton: 40%
Barack Obama: 23%
John Edwards: 15%

*There is a more recent Iowa Poll showing Obama with 22% lead over Clinton among "younger voters," however that poll only breaks out 18-44 year olds, making any comparisons apples and oranges at best. Those who are interested can read it here. (pdf)

In the last week, the Clinton Campaign has worked hard to hammer those numbers home in the media and capture the youth vote narrative from Obama. The campaign released a memo touting her appeal among young voters.

This memo had its flaws. It laughably touted Clinton's popularity on Friendster, a social network that went out of fashion more than four years ago and is now primarily populated by Gen Xers who never moved on to FaceBook or MySpace. It also pointed out that the Senator has 50,000 supporters on FaceBook, failing to note the well-known fact that an anti-Hillary group has 10 times as many supporters. Nevertheless, it had its intended effect, resulting in stories about Clinton's support among young voters in the Washington Post and The Atlantic. These could be the beginning of a shift in the youth vote narrative which thus far has crowned Obama as the heir to the youth vote.

As Alice reported earlier this week, the campaign also launched Hillblazers, a website aimed at organizing young voters. Hillblazers is a stale, barebones website with a depressing color scheme and zero dynamic content. Most links send the user over to the main Clinton website, and there's nothing to do except allow the campaign to harvest your personal contact information. The action items are a joke, and their idea of contributing to the campaign is to "visualize change." In real person speak, that's code for purchase and wear our schwag.

Hillblzers also makes the common mistake of equating the youth vote with college students. If the site had some more meat to it I might say that this conflation of students and the youth vote was purposeful - and even a politically savvy move. Polling has consistently shown that Hillary's support comes from non-college youth and Obama's strength from those attending schools. Viewed in that light, Hillblazers might be seen as an attempt to cut into Obama's base among 18-29 year olds. This seems unlikely, however. The site feels more like a stop gap measure to prevent people from criticizing Hillary for lack of youth outreach than it does a genuine effort to organize young people.

As Alice suggests, perhaps the Clinton campaign made a calculated decision that they didn't need the youth vote in the primaries and what they are really doing is laying groundwork for the general election. I'd be very disapointed if that were the case, but considering the lackluster tool set available on Hillblazers, it is a distinct possibility.

Despite her apparent popularity in the polls, reports continue to come in that Hillary's support among youth on the stump is underwhelming at best and pales in comparison to the energy and organizing power exhibited by the Obama campaign, most recently from from the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder. There are gaps a mile wide between the effort put forth by the Clinton Campaign, their polling numbers, and the enthusiasm of her supporters, especially when compared to the enthusiasm and demonstrated organizational skill of the Obama campaign. I don't really have an answer to why this is. Hillary's appeal and real support among young voters remains something of an enigma. This is going to make for an interesting caucus night.