Are Democrats Abandoning Young Voters?

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CIRCLE has numbers about yesterday's vote in the special election for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts.

According to the briefing:

"Tisch College, Medford/Somerville, Mass - In the special election for Massachusetts Senator, young voters (age 18-29) preferred Democrat Martha Coakley over Republican Scott Brown by 58%-40% (with 2% for other candidates), according to a survey of 1,000 voters conducted on January 19, by Rasmussen Reports.

About 15% of Massachusetts citizens between the ages of 18-29 turned out to vote.* For citizens age 30 and older, turnout was about 57%.

For comparison: 25% of young citizens (age 18-29) voted in the 2008 Massachusetts presidential primaries, and 47.8% of young Massachusetts citizens voted in the 2008 presidential elections, according to CIRCLE’s analysis. Seventy-eight percent of under-30 voters in Massachusetts chose Barack Obama in the 2008 general election; 20% chose John McCain."

Part of me is angry that we lost this seat to someone who doesn't support the youth agenda, but the major part of me is that young people obviously supported Coakley but there was - according to one political insider - "zero" outreach from the Coakley campaign to young voters.

This didn't need to happen.

As one person reminded me - Massachusetts is a state with one of the largest student populations in the country. It is an embarrassment that there was such a huge resource available to the Coakley camp but it was cast aside.

I just did a Skype interview with the Millennials Changing America blog that is done by Mike Hais and Morley Winograd, authors of Millennial Makeover. I was asked by Alex what the biggest failures I've seen both from the White House and from Congress are and my response was that its been a total lack of outreach on their part to young people around meaningful policy initiatives.

Young people continue to be the largest supporters for the President, they continue to be the largest supporters for meaningful Health Care Reform, but not once did the White House or Congress reach out to youth leaders and say "What can we do to bring you into this debate?"

It begs the question - is the Democratic Party abandoning young people despite young people being their base of support?

UPDATE: This is interesting. I just got an email from a field organizer who said that many of the folks from a nearby state who were working on the ground moved over to Coakley's campaign to help. They specifically told the DSCC that they thought it might be helpful to mobilize around UMASS Amherst who were coming back to school this week. DSCC said - great we'll have our youth person give you a call - no one ever did. (Turns out... there is no youth person)

UPDATE 2: The Cook Report's @Dave_Wasserman has been tweeting about district breakdowns for results. Holyoke, MA (which is home to all-girls Mount Holyoke College and right in the middle of the cluster UMass Amherst, Amherst College, Hampshire College, and Smith) also failed to turn out the vote. As a friend who pointed this out said - The fact that two of those schools are all-girls and politically active, and Coakley didn't mobilize them, is shameful.