Harvard IOP Fall Survey Results

As promised, here's my take/overview of the more interesting parts of the new Harvard Institute of Politics Fall Survey. The survey interviewed over 2,500 18-24 year olds, half of whom have or are currently attending college, and half who are/have not.

It's important to note - especially in light of comments by so-called experts like Charlie Cook that recent youth turnout trends "are a blip" - that the IOP opens their report with strong statements about how radically the youth vote has changed since they first started the survey in 2000:

The level of political and community engagement that we have identified and quantified over the last several years stands in contrast to our first IOP survey released in the spring of 2000. At that time, we were in a cycle of record low turnout among college-aged youth and we found a major disconnect between young Americans and the political process.

From 9/11, to Iraq, to Katrina, to threats of global warming and concern for our health care system, much has changed over the course of thirteen surveys, including the level of engagement of young Americans in politics. Since our first survey in 2000 we have witnessed:

• voter turnout among 18 to 24 year-olds in the United States grow approximately 31 percent -- from 36 percent in the 2000 presidential election to 47 percent in the 2004 election.
• young voters propel Jim Webb (VA) and Jon Tester (MT) to the U.S. Senate in 2006 giving Democrats control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 12 years.
• hundreds, if not thousands, of organic social groups of young Americans flourish online and offline in support of favored candidates or pressing policy issues.

I hope that John Della Volpe, the head of the Institute, gets lots of network and cable TV time on this. His statements stand in stark contrast to those of the Charlie Cooks of American Politics, and he's a credible face for young voters in a media often hostile to his and our message.

Some interesting developments in the Presidential campaigns:

Young Republicans are dissatisfied with nearly all of their choices (note that this came before Huckabee's surge), and even Giuliani, long the favorite, is losing significant support. Meanwhile, Democratic leaning youth continue to coalesce around Obama, though it's a much closer race than nationally between he and Clinton than we've seen in some state polling. The survey has some interesting information on just how that Hillary/Obama support breaks down:

At about the time the IOP poll was taken, Hillary Clinton maintained a very solid 19-point lead over Barack Obama (44%-25%) in national polling of all registered voters, while among only young Democrats aged 18 to 24, Obama led by 5 -- a 30 percentage point swing.

• Obama leads Clinton, 44%-23%, on college campuses, but Clinton leads Obama, 38%-31% among those who never attended college;
• Obama leads Clinton, 37%-28%, among Whites, 62%-25% among African Americans, but trails 54%-20% among Hispanics;
• Obama leads Clinton, 40%-28%, among men; Clinton leads Obama by only one, 37%-36% among women;
• Obama leads Clinton, 51%-26% in the Midwest and 42%-29% in the East, but Obama trails Clinton by 9 in the South and by 6 in the West.

Particularly interesting is Obama's advantage among African American youth, and Hillary's notable lack of advantage among young women. Obama has faced a lot of questioning for a lack of support among African Americans, and conventional wisdom has stated that Hillary's lead has come from her advantage among women. It appears that neither of these demographic patters hold true among young voters, and indeed this could be in part where Obama's surge of support is coming from.

Polling Variances
Apropos of my post earlier today, I found it interesting that polling young voters on a landline or on a cellphone yielded significantly different results when asking about Presidential choice among Democratic leaning voters:

Perhaps most importantly to any consumer of public opinion data on the Millennial Generation, the Democratic nomination looks significantly different based on the kind of sampling that is employed (Random Digit Dialing via landline or web-based). By a statistically significant margin, Hillary Clinton does better among young voters with landline telephone access (leads by 5) than she does with voters who do not have landlines (trails by 13) and maintain only cell or VOIP service (a significant and growing segment of the electorate).

I don't have any figures, but perhaps college-educated youth are the most likely to have cell phones in place of a landline, accounting for the discrepancy. However, hispanic voters are supposedly more likely than any other demographic to use a cell phone as their only line, and that group is breaking towards Hillary by a large margin (reported above). My best guess is that there still aren't enough hispanic youth to overcome Obama's advantage among college (and white) youth.

Party Support by Demographic

This was very interesting. "Independent" still seems to be the preferred label of young voters, regardless of their other demographic categories, but among the parties, Democrats retain an advantage or at least a tie with Republicans among every single demographic group except "white," "evengelical," and "protestant." And the Republican advantage among "whites" is only 2%. In fact, "evangelicals" is the only demographic category in which Republicans hold a statistically significant lead over Democrats.

This bodes well for the future, as the white evangelical demographic is likely to fall in influence as the country continues to become more diverse. This is the making of the progressive future majority in 10, 20, 30 years time.

The end of cynicism?
Lots of folks are fond of saying that young voters are cynical about politics. That may be true, but the IOP survey continues to confirm that young people have faith in our government an in the power of political action, and in fact, that view is gaining currency among more young people than ever before:

Compared to 2006, slightly more young people believe that political engagement is an effective way of solving important issues facing the country. Overall, 63 percent of 18 to 24 year olds in the IOP poll reported that political engagement was effective, 37 percent said not effective. This constitutes a net 6-point swing from last year.

The future looks bright for Democrats.