Will Race Be a Factor Among South Carolina Youth?

Apologies that this is light on links.  I just got engaged and need to run out to a brunch.  I'll be back tonight to respond to comments.

The polls are open in South Carolina, and most pollsters have Obama up by at least 6 points.  The main storyline is that this is going to be a primary decided by race.  Clinton likes that story line because it will let her dismiss the results if she loses (she was always going to lose, etc.).  Obama likes it because just a few months ago, Clinton was winning South Carolina by large margins, in large part because the African American vote was leaning her way.  He gets to definitively lay claim to a solid base of the Democratic electorate moving into Super Tuesday.

Polling released Thursday by McClatchy-MSNBC showed 59 percent of African Americans in the state supporting Sen. Obama. This confirmed the shift in support among black voters away from Sen. Clinton and towards Sen. Obama first noted in a poll commissioned by the Washington Post and ABC News.  That poll gave Obama 60 percent of the African American vote, a dramatic shift from a previous survey that showed Clinton leading among African Americans 54 to 35 percent.

The interesting thing about South Carolina is that this racial dynamic doesn't seem to be playing out quite as dramatically among younger voters.

According to data provided to me by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), 34 percent of 18 to 29 year olds in South Carolina are African American, higher than in any previous state. That would seem to be an advantage for Senator Barack Obama, who captured a super majority of support from African Americans in Nevada.

Yet despite the higher African American population in South Carolina, the latest poll from Rasmussen Reports, shows Obama with a 26-point lead over Senator  Hillary Clinton among young voters.  That is big, to be sure, and Obama will win the youth vote. But it is also identical to his margin of victory among young voters in Nevada, where African American youth accounted for less than 20 percent of the youth population.

If young African Americans were overwhelmingly moving towards Obama, and if they make up a greater percentage of the electorate, shouldn't Obama be winning by a larger margin?

In fact, an earlier poll of the state conducted by Rasmussen Reports in December of 2007 showed Obama with a 58 to 3 percent lead among young voters, indicating that if anything the Illinois Sen. had lost ground among young voters in South Carolina (and by default, young black voters).

Now, those polls have small sample sizes, so take them with a grain of salt.  But there is anecdotal evidence as well.  I spoke with a few organizers in the state who seemed to back up this theory.  Travis Johnson, 26, President of the South Carolina Democrats said:

College students period will have a big influence on the vote. More so than dividing it by race. The generation under 30, we really are the change generation. We really do want to see the racial divide go away and equal opportunity for all people.

Christina Henderson, 21, student body president at Furman University, and HillBlazers organizer agreed:

I think the whole race and gender thing that has been in the media - I don't think young people are looking at it that way. Either the first woman or African American is going to be a great change.

Granted, there's a little bit of each candidate's message in those quotes, but taken together it seems like there's something here.  It's striking that younger people in the state are playing down the racial dynamic even as the candidates and media ramp up its importance.  It would also make sense because the Millennials are supposedly the most diverse and tolerant generation in America, and some have gone so far as to call them the first "post-racial" generation.  

That may be going a bit far.  Race will continue to be with us for a long time.  But maybe this is some preliminary evidence of those trends playing out in Democratic politics.  Today's younger voters don't care about the old racial battles in the same way that their elders do.

Regardless of which campaign wins the youth vote, both campaigns will be looking to boost turnout above the 9% share of the electorate set in 2004.  

Complicating these efforts is the fact that South Carolina is the first state in the Democratic primaries to not allow same day voter registration. The deadline to register for Saturday's primary was December 26th, according to the South Carolina State Election Commission.

The ability to register to vote on election day played a significant part in increasing young voter turnout, particularly in Iowa, where young voters were 22 percent of the electorate, and in New Hampshire, where 43 percent of all eligible young voters went to the polls. Without some form of same day registration, it may be difficult to replicate large turnout number from those earlier states.

Low youth turnout would hurt the Obama campaign more so than Clinton. In the three previous contests Obama carried young voters by large margins, though he narrowly lost the 25 - 29 demographic to Sen. Clinton in New Hampshire.  But all Democrats should hope for  high youth turnout because it will mean good things for Democrats in the general election.  If not in turning the state Blue, at least in helping down ballot Democratic candidates.