iowa caucus

Tuesday's New Hampshire Primary might have given Ron Paul only a second place finish, but he cleaned up with young voters.

Participation among young voters plummeted in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, when compared to the state’s 2008 primary, but nearly half of eligible voters under 30 years old who did show up to the polls threw their support behind Ron Paul."

According to CIRCLE data

"Although young voters did not turn out at a particularly high rate this year, they did have an impact by concentrating their votes for Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), helping him come in second behind former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA)," said CIRCLE Director Peter Levine. "Dr. Paul’s 47% support from 18- to 29-year-olds was the strongest level of support for any candidate by any age group."

Of those eligible voters 18-30, 15 percent voted in yesterday's NH Primary. By contrast 4 percent of eligible voters under 30 participated in the Iowa Caucus, and similarly Ron Paul received a majority of the support from those young voters (48 percent), according to CIRCLE.

"According to CIRCLE’s estimate, approximately 8,800 young people turned out for Ron Paul in last night’s caucus. In comparison, at least 30,000 young people turned out for Barack Obama in the 2008 Iowa Caucuses, contributing to his victory there. Almost twice as many young voters supported Obama in 2008 as supported all the 2012 Republican candidates combined. The 48% support for Rep. Paul was the highest level of support for any candidate among any age group in yesterday’s Caucuses. (Mitt Romney won 33% of the votes of ages 65 and older, the second strongest concentration of support.) Youth represented a typical proportion of all the Iowa Caucus-goers in 2012 at 15%.

"For the second election in a row, youth played an important role in the Iowa Caucuses,” said CIRCLE Director Peter Levine. “In 2008, they turned out strong and gave their support to both parties’ Iowa Caucus winners, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee. In 2012, they turned out at a more typical rate but threw such a high proportion of their votes to Ron Paul that he finished close. It is statistically unlikely that the young Paul supporters of 2012 had caucused for Obama in 2008. It is more likely that a different group was mobilized in each year."

Paul contrasts significantly with other Republican candidates by speaking directly to issues that matter to many young republicans. While Paul talks about pulling out of all of the wars and legalization of pot, Santorum gets in trouble by going to colleges and speaking about his opposition to equality. Paul's ground game also targets young people and asks them to participate - which contrasts with candidates like Newt Gingrich who supports making it harder for young people to vote. Clearly, working with young voters instead of against them garners results - at least in Ron Paul's case.

According to some young voters issues like unemployment and the cost of higher education were issues that mattered most to them during this election.

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.

There are only 67 days left until the Iowa Caucus, and one of the big questions is how young voters fill figure into the caucus. Will they participate so close to the New Year, or will winter vacation prove the perfect time for an increased turnout? Will they caucus at home, scattered across the state, or in their university towns? One of the questions not being asked is "will they know what to do when they get to the caucus?"

The Iowa Caucus isn't like voting in a primary. You can't just go and flip a switch and be done with it. The caucus lasts for hours, and frequently you need to know not only who you support, but how the caucus divvies up delegates and what to do when a candidate is declared nonviable. You need to know how to politick and capture people's second votes, and you need to have a game plan if your candidate is one of those knocked out of the running.

Campaigns are well aware of this (especially after watching Dean's supporters fail to adequately politick for people's second choice on CSPAN in 2004), and most are likely gearing up to not only turn people out to the caucuses, but to train them on how to squeeze the most delegates out of each caucus. But campaigns aren't the only ones who will be vying to turn young Iowans into savvy caucus-goers. Rock the Vote is teaming up with the Iowa PIRG and the New Voters Project to teach young Iowans the ABCs of caucusing, and to drive up turnout among young participants.

Dubbed Rock the Caucus, the program has two main components. First, Rock the vote is partnering with the Secretary of State's office and local high schools to hold mock caucus trainings and secure pledges from high-schoolers who will be 18 by election day to attend the January 3rd caucus. On 2 and 4 year college campuses, the Iowa Student PIRG will recruit "caucus rock stars" who will pledge to get 20 of their peers to attend the caucus. In all, they are looking to recruit 250 such people to pull an additional 5000 young voters into the caucus. In addition, both organizations will be calling people on election day to remind them to turnout to the caucus, as well as employing (and testing) a variety of experimental GOTV strategies such as using MySpace and Facebook to remind people to attend their caucus.

How effective will they be?

A number of newsworthy articles around the tubes today:

• US News is running an excellent story that gets the youth vote right. The biggest shock of the story though, comes from Mitt Romney. You may remember that long ago I reported on Mitt Romney's scheme to get young voters raising cash for his campaign by promising them a 10% cut on anything raised over $1000? Well according to this story, that program has brought in $100,000. No word as to whether or not any of the budding fundraisers actually got their cut.
• Ben Adler has a great story at the Politico about what the newly declared January 3rd caucus date means for the Democratic campaign's youth vote strategy. Adler notes that Obama will be looking to have his supporters caucus at home to spread support across the state. Edwards, on the other hand, will look to have his supporters caucus in university towns, where his support is weak. Adler notes that not all students will have a choice, as some dorms may not be open during the caucus.
• On a related note, the Politico just launched a students section: Campus Politico.
• Finally, Shang Ting Lipton takes a look at the role of pop culture (or lack of) in Hillary's campaign in her Huffington Post column: Going Hillywood.

Rasmussen Reports has produced new polling numbers on the Iowa Caucus, including the first results of what young Iowans think of the Democratic field. A look at the cross tabs reveal that Hillary Clinton has a shockingly large lead over Obama among young Iowans. 40% of 18-29 year old respondents expressed support for Senator Clinton in the upcoming caucus, compared to 23% for Senator Obama, and 15% for Senator Edwards.

There are some caveats here. 18-29 year olds only comprised 8% of the overall sample - a low number to be sure, but not necessarily so low that the results can be disregarded. There are also factors that make Iowa polling difficult:

Polling for caucus participants is challenging for a variety of reasons including the fact that such a small percentage of the voting age population actually participates. Also, with such small numbers of actual participants, campaign organization techniques can have a significant impact on the actual turnout. Weather and other factors can also influence the final participation and outcome.

Rasmussen is also quick to note that much of the candidate's support is still fluid at this point in the race. That said, this is yet another piece in a growing body of evidence that Obama does not have a lock on the youth vote, despite the prevailing media narrative to the contrary.

Sorry for missing my post yesterday. Book deadlines are coming on hard and fast this month, and I'll try to have that happen is little as possible. I'll have a couple posts later this afternoon, in the meantime here are a few quick hits.

• The New York Times ran a piece this week about the (lack of) impact that technology is having on the Iowa Caucus. In some respects this is a no brainer - Iowa is all about having a good peer-to-peer ground game and teaching your supporters how to politick at the caucus. But at the same time, the story commits a number of sins. First, it doesn't seem like they interviewed any young people for the story - strange considering that younger voters are the ones most likely to be interfacing with the campaigns through technology. The second sin is that the piece seems to justify this omission by citing a Des Moines register poll that young voters only account for 7% of likely caucus goers.

  We know that likely voter screens automatically disqualify a large portion of young voters, leading to gross underrepresentation in the polls, and if 2004 is any indication, turnout among young voters will likely meet or exceed 17%. That's sloppy work by the Times and one could easily question whether or not data was excluded to fit their preconceived storyline.

• The Houston Chronicle is running one of the best stories about the youth vote that I've ever read this year. It tracks very closely to the things we've been discussing here on FM. Go read it.
• Project Vote Smart is looking to build its brand and get young people more informed about the electoral process. The group has purchased a bus and will be driving across the country to raise awareness and, in partnership with Rock the Vote, register voters. This has lame written all over it.
• The Harvard Crimson has a great op-ed about the folly of legislating video games.
• Look Ma, I'm in the Huffington Post.

Update II: So people tell me that yes, the amount of delegates per precinct is fixed, and loading up highly populated precincts is worthless. Making the answer to my question and emphatic NO. In fact, an earlier caucus probably helps the Obama campaign as it would spread their support across the state, and young Iowans who leave the state to attend school would be home at their parents' houses.

Update: I posted this in a couple places, and I'm getting pushback that the earlier caucus would be a boon to Obama because his support would be spread across the state - more valuable in a caucus than in a primary. I confess to not being able to wrap my head around the intricacies of the caucus process. So I'm basically unable to determine whether that is true or not. It strikes me that it could be true. But also that it would be valuable for the youth vote to tip a few highly populated precincts/districts Obama's way and for the campaign to rely on their other constituencies in more rural districts. Frankly I don't know.
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It appears that our shifting primary schedule may be throwing a wrench into the gears of the Obama turnout strategy.

Right now, the Iowa Caucus is set for Monday, January 14th. I was listening to The Gabfest - Slate's political podcast - this morning, and heard that January 14th, which is a Monday, doubles as the first day of classes for most Iowa universities. That's great for Obama - it means that lots of out-of-state kids are back at school and eligible to vote in the Caucus. It means that tens of thousands of potential supporters are centrally located in a few hubs across the state. It makes the turnout game that much easier for Barack in a race where he needs to at least come in second if he's to blunt Hillary's momentum.

If the caucus is moved up to earlier in the year, however - a likely possibility - Obama's Iowa strategy becomes MUCH harder to execute. Thousands of potential supporters won't even be in the state - they'll be at their parent's house celebrating the New Year and packing up for next semester. Those that are in-state will be scattered across the plains and will require much more work to turnout.

I'm sure the decision to move (or not) the caucus will be made with plenty of time to spare for campaigns to adjust their strategy, but either way you shake it, an earlier primary looks like bad news for Obama and good news for Edwards or Hillary, who are relying on older constituencies to deliver the votes.

Various items that I've noticed but don't have time to dig into:

Reports from Texas indicate that voter registration is way up. Some are even predicting a big youth turnout due to the governor's race (which Josh has blogged here.)

A number of groups are looking to make college education costs a big issue in the upcoming election (a little late for that, no?). I don't think college education costs are going to be the factor that these groups want in '06, but I do think that this issue could be a big player in the primaries, where presidential contenders will need to gather the support of the increasingly important youth vote.

Garance Franke-Ruta wrote a bit about this on Tapped. Apparently, students in Iowa and New Hampshire (pdf) have the greatest debt burdens in America among college grads - making this a juicy primary issue. We'll see which presidential contenders can make hay out of it in '07 and '08.

Little Joey Biden may be the first candidate to hop on that bandwagon. Iowa Politics is reporting that his PAC just donated $3000 to the Iowa College Democrats to do GOTV work this cycle.

Finally, an initiative to legalize marijuana looks like its been taking tips from the New Politics Institute. Groups supporting the measure have been reaching out to students through social networking sites and targeted radio buys. It will be interesting to see how much support they garner.