Senior Citizens: The Long-Term Hope of the Democratic Party

This is a little dated, but Kate Sheppard over at Tapped clued me in to a 2003 CIRCLE study (pdf) that examined the role that state parties play in engaging young voters in the political process. The study found that among Democratic and Republican state party leaders, an overwhelming majority thought that senior citizens were the most important demographic for the long-term health of the party. Yeah, wrap your head around the logic of that one.

When asked an open-ended question, only 5% of Democratic Party leaders and 8% of Republican Party leaders thought that younger voters were the most important group for the future health of their party. Each official was asked this question two more times, and at the end of the survey, only 32% of Democratic leaders and 26% of Republican leaders mentioned young people as a constituency of any importance to the party.

Granted, this study was published in 2003, a few months before the youth organizing boom revved up, and it was over a year before youth turnout began it's upward trend. But this is a good indication for how clueless the parties were - and to a large extent continue to be - about the importance of engaging young voters.

I'd love to see a follow-up to this study. My bet is that the situation wasn't much changed as recently as two months ago, though after Obama's big youth turnouts, it's an open question now. The youth organizing movement now has a huge opportunity to push the state and national parties into putting real resources into young voter engagement and turnout.