demographics

Some Sunday reading:

• The New York Times reports that President Obama may have to give up his blackberry. It certainly is nice to have a technologically-engaged president in the White House who is at least pushing the envelope on these issues.
• Meanwhile, Obama's not procrastinating at staffing his White House. Some more roles have been filled today.
• An examination of young voters' preoccupation with merit and what that meant in the Minnesota senate race.
• A panel discussion on "Generation We" will be held tomorrow at Noon at the First Amendment Lounge at the National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor, in Washington, DC. Sponsored by Eric Greenberg, author of the book "Generation We: How Millennial Youth Are Taking Over America And Changing Our World Forever," and moderated by The Politico's Ben Adler, the panel will include the following confirmed panelists: Ruy Teixeira, Senior Fellow at both The Century Foundation and American Progress, who will present new findings on the youth vote this election cycle; Alexandra Acker, national executive director of Young Democrats of America; Michael Moschella, director of outreach at the Truman National Security Project; and Kat Barr, political outreach director at Rock the Vote.
• Bruce E. Cain, a professor at UC Berkeley, offers his thoughts on the GOP's demographics problems. He discusses youth and their current politics and nails it:
  

  Finally, there is the new generation. Even before this election, the Generation Y kids were participating in public life at higher levels than their Generation X predecessors. What strikes me as I read their resumes and talk to them at the university is that they are more service-oriented (partly because community service is a requirement at many schools), technologically oriented (they have been running computers and electronics for their parents for years) and world-savvy (they intern as a way of testing out the world). Generation X was the "me" generation; Y seems to be the "us" cohort. Republicans may want to think about what that means for them.

• An examination of the new electorate in American politics.
• The Nation has a "You Voted. Now What?" post-election guide for young voters on how to stay engaged. Check it out.
• Young Australians are also politically engaged at record levels.
• "Liberal" just isn't pejorative with young voters. Deal with it.

The verdict from PEW, which is working off of the exit polling data:

Without a doubt, the overwhelming backing of younger voters was a critical factor in Obama's victory, according to an analysis of National Election Pool exit polls that were provided by National Public Radio. Obama drew two-thirds (66%) of the vote among those younger than age 30. This age group was Kerry's strongest four years ago, but he drew a much narrower 54% majority.

Taking our own look at the exit poll data, here's how the youth vote broke down within various racial demographics:

The margins among black and latino youth are enormous and I'm eager to see what the turnout was for those groups when we get more data. At the moment, though, the breakdown of white youth is most interesting to me. In 2004, Kerry lost white youth to President Bush 58 - 40%. On Tuesday, Obama gained 14 points on Kerry's support among white youth, while McCain lost 14 on Bush's support. White youth still make up a majority of young voters (though that is quickly changing) and that is an enormous amount of votes.

In addition to their excellent fact sheet on voter registration and election laws earlier today, CIRCLE also released a fact sheet providing the definitive data on youth turnout in 2000 and 2004, and youth demographic data for 2008. The page also links to an interactive flash map that breaks the youth vote turnout data down on a state by state basis.

Every reporter, blogger, and youth advocate should have this page bookmarked.

And here are the demographic breakdowns of the youth vote for 2000, 2004, and 2008:

Some reading for your Sunday:

• David Sirota's latest column is spot-on, criticizing the obsessive focus we all have with the presidency, and examining how that hurts the quality of our nation.
• A post from the Utah Amicus blog discusses the College Democrats of America's role in the surge in youth political activism.
• More College Democrats -- An Obama blog post on the meshing of the Obama campaign with the College Democrats' efforts this fall at the College Democrats convention.
• More evangelicals: The Rothenberg Political Report has yet more polling information with regard to evangelicals voting in the presidential election.
• "You Don't Have to Burn Bras to Be Politically Active," an op-ed by Jessica Sidman in the Dallas Morning News, discusses a topic we're all well-aware of around here -- Boomer youth political activism versus Millennial youth political activism.
• A story in the Providence Journal on Obama's appeal to youth and how the campaign uses technology to connect.
• A California newspaper discusses the Democrats' advantages given the current national political climate bringing the political views and demography of young people into the analysis.

Sorry my posting is somewhat light this week. It's getting to be convention crunch time and I'm spending an inordinate amount of time doing non blogging things like responding to press requests, figuring out my schedule for Denver, and planning for the Fall and 2009 (yeah, it's that time already).

I wanted to make a quick comment about Chris Bower's mostly excellent article on the changing demographics of the country and the Democratic coalition. In his piece, Bowers says (emphasis mine):

Given that Republicans consolidated a shrinking majority against a series of rising minorities, unless the scapegoating stops, their electoral future appears bleak. In 1992 Latinos and Asians made up only 3 percent of the electorate, but in 2006 they accounted for 10 percent. In 1990, according to the National Survey of Religious Identification conducted by the City University of New York, only 10 percent of the country self-identified as non-Christian. According to a 2001 follow-up from CUNY as well as a 2008 study conducted by the Pew Forum on religion and American life, that number had increased to 22-23 percent of the national population. Although it receives somewhat less fanfare, the national drift away from Christian self-identification is changing the cultural face of America even more rapidly than the large influx of Latino and Asian immigrants. Combined, these two trends are changing the cultural and political structure of America with such alacrity that, according to a 2005 study by Greenberg Quinlin Rosner, "OMG! How Generation Y Is Redefining Faith in the iPod Era," only 39 percent of Americans born between 1965 and 1994 (inclusive) self-identify as both white and Christian, compared with 66 percent of Americans born in 1964 or earlier. Given the partisan voting habits of nonwhites and non-Christians discussed in the previous paragraph, it isn't hard to see that Republicans are facing a slow-motion electoral tidal wave that is turning the country nearly 1 percent more Democratic every year, regardless of specific political conditions.

It is from this rising tide that Obama should find his victory. For all the talk of his appeal to the youth vote, the truth is that overwhelming Democratic advantages among young voters are a derivative of pro-Democratic demographics, such as nonwhites and non-Christians (and single women and the LGBT population) forming a disproportionate share of the youth vote.

I'm probably being overly sensitive here, but this seems like a truly weird sentence. Obama is ahead among the youth vote, a key factor in his victory, but the youth vote is not a significant political demographic because his support among young voters has more to do with race/gender/sexuality than it does age. This implication in the piece is that demographics, not organizing, is destiny. Not just for Obama, but for the Democratic Party coalition.

It's not that I think Bowers is wrong - not at all. Breaking the Democratic coalition, and the youth vote, down into these constituent parts is truly useful and meaningful. But the idea that the larger entity of "the youth vote" as an age bracket is not equally meaningful seems wrong to me.

These demographics groups that Bowers identifies tend to vote at lower rates than do others - even more so among younger members. Realizing the power of these demographic shifts requires organizing. And when it comes to organizing, at both a tactical and strategic level, age matters in electoral politics.

Messaging
Younger voters worry about many of the same issues as older voters (the economy, health care, the war), but our focus is different than that of our elders. We worry about college debt/tuition, gas prices, entry level jobs, our friends in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. And there are some issues that are almost uniquely generational like Global Climate Change and Green jobs. This requires candidates to deploy tailored (microtargeted) messages on these issues to younger audiences. That microtargeting must take into account a number of factors, including age.

Tactics
The method a campaign uses to reach young voters - text message, social networks, radio, cable TV - are also largely determined by one's age. This is as true for single white females as it is for LGBT Latinos.

Strategy
The biggest factor of all: whether or not a campaign should build a strategy around, and resources in reaching, young voters is purely a decision made based on age and voting reliability. Most Democratic campaigns and committees still view the youth vote as a mythical unicorn and want candidates with limited resources to cut youth off of their walk lists. That's an indiscriminate decision based purely on age.

Politics is Changing
This is all to say nothing of the huge generational shifts happening in our politics now. Obama vs. McCain is one instance. Older civil rights groups/leaders vs. younger ones is another. We've seen older and younger feminists duking it out this year as well. Within pretty much all the demographic categories Bowers identifies, there are generational shifts occurring and age is a factor.

So yes, I agree with Bowers that these demographic trends are hugely important and matter. And in an ideal world in which we only look at demographic trends and not the causes behind them or what is required to realize the potential of those trends, they probably matter a whole lot more than age. But we live and operate in a political environment in which age matters - for strategy, tactics and messaging. Successful youth outreach requires that we recognize that distinction - whatever a persons race, religion, sexuality or marital status.

What I'm reading today:

• The American Prospect looks at the good and the bad behind Obama's takeover of the DNC.
• A companion piece looks at the 15 most important advisors behind the Obama operation.
• Chris Bowers examines the demographic trends behind Obama's coalition and declares an end to the era of Values Voters and "Bubba Dominance."
• WireTap profiles Tony Peyton, the youngest member of the Pennsylvania House, and how the Center for Progressive Leadership helped shape him into a winning candidate.
• John McCain is trying to steal credit for the new GI Bill, which he actively opposed and obstructed.
• Bondelli explains how you can build your own Sprout Widget.
• The Voto Latino blog pointed me to this GQ profile of Meghan McCain from back in March. It's so vacuous at times that can't decide if it is a terrible profile or sheer genius on the part on the part of the McCain campaign. The girl did go to Columbia. What do you think?
• If, like me, you've been mesmerized by HBO's Generation Kill, you should check out the original Rolling Stone article by Evan Wright.
• Youth are a prime target in the Indiana Governor's race.
• Gawker thinks that MSNBC is trending Democratic and will continue to do so as it rakes in younger viewers.
• The Virginia Pilot notes that 2/3 of the 200,000 newly registered voters in the state are under the age of 35. The paper declares voter registration the new youth movement. I couldn't agree more.

A story in The New York Times notes that drastic changes in the partisan make-up of the voter rolls bodes well for Democrats this year and may produce - dare we say it - a political realignment.

In several states, including the traditional battlegrounds of Nevada and Iowa, Democrats have surprised their own party officials with significant gains in registration. In both of those states, there are now more registered Democrats than Republicans, a flip from 2004. No states have switched to the Republicans over the same period, according to data from 26 of the 29 states in which voters register by party. (Three of the states did not have complete data.)

In six states, including Iowa, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, the Democratic piece of the registration pie grew more than three percentage points, while the Republican share declined. In only three states — Kentucky, Louisiana and Oklahoma — did Republican registration rise while Democratic registration fell, but the Republican increase was less than a percentage point in Kentucky and Oklahoma. Louisiana was the only state to register a gain of more than one percentage point for Republicans as Democratic numbers declined.

What's happening here? A number of things, according to the article. First, there is an increase in Democratic registrations, but more significantly, there is a huge decrease in Republican registrations (and a corresponding increase in "independent" registrations). These changes are already having an impact up and down the ticket:

In the 26 states and the District of Columbia where registration data were available, the total number of registered Democrats increased by 214,656, while the number of Republicans fell by 1,407,971.

The unsettled political ground has manifested itself in state and local elections. Twenty-three state legislatures are controlled by Democrats and 14 by Republicans, with 12 states with divided chambers (Nebraska has a nonpartisan legislature). After the 2000 election, 16 state legislatures were dominated by Democrats, and 17 by Republicans, with 16 divided.

It is a similar story in governors’ mansions. After the 2004 election, there were 28 Republican governors and 22 Democrats; those numbers are now reversed. After the 2000 election, there were only 19 Democratic governors.

Young people are playing a roll as well, and it's great to see a major political story get the story right - this is about more than excitement over Obama's candidacy:

In many states, Democrats have benefited from a rise in younger potential voters, after declines or small increases in the number of those voters in the 1980s and ’90s. The population of 18- to 24-year-olds rose from about 27 million in 2000 to nearly 30 million in 2006, according to Census figures.

Mr. Obama’s candidacy has drawn many young people to register to vote, and some of the recent gains by Democrats have no doubt been influenced by excitement over his campaign. But even before Mr. Obama’s ascendancy among Democrats, younger voters were moving toward the Democratic Party, demographers said.

Dowell Myers, a professor of policy, planning and development at the University of Southern California, also noted that a younger, native-born generation of Latinos who have a tendency to support Democrats is coming of age.

Further, young Americans have migrated in recent years to high-growth states that have traditionally been dominated by Republicans, like Arizona, Colorado and Nevada, which may have had an impact on the changing registration numbers in those places.

This is all great news, but one word of caution. Let's remember that the vast majority of these new young voters are college students. There's still a lot of work to do registering non-college students. These numbers should be a lot higher come October.

This was too interesting not to post right away. As part of their survey, and in recognition that many young people allegedly get their news from Comedy Central, the IOP asked their 2000 + respondents whether they preferred Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert (or neither). The responses were interesting to say the least.

Apparently Colbert pics up the youthiest of the youth vote (18 and 19 year olds), as well as young Republicans/conservatives and young religious voters. Stewart pics up the older respondents and the more died-in-the-wool liberals. Those Colbert viewers know it's satire, right?

Bizarro world viewership stats aside, I think it's most telling that a plurality of young people don't know or don't care about Stewart and Colbert. We are definitely living in a niche world, and Stewart and Colbert are not the modern day Walter Cronkite, however much we might like it to be so.

Sorry for lateness, as My Sunday Thing has slid this week into My Monday Thing and quite nearly Tuesday. Such is a life of casual brutality and 400-level classes deconstructing post-colonial literature. How about that for a pretentious opening? You’re all but required to read the rest to see if I recover.

This is also kind of a discussion piece on blogging, youth demographics, and bringing more people into the online process. For those looking for my usual content, “John McCain is old and crazy, Rudy Giuliani is a white supremacist, and the system is corrupt and must be skull fucked to death.” Neat.

Anyway, one of those things that have been eating at me has been something along these lines: this blog as a concept is supposed to serve as a rally point for youth political operatives looking to ferment serious change in their environments. It is a belief that the infrastructure being built, (democratized, low cost, and with the ability to reach mass audiences) will almost certainly lend itself to the 18-30 set that’s all but grown up anchored in the ins and outs of digital communication.

That attempt at appeal to youth, oddly enough, is completely at odds with the present system. The system, as it stands, is run for boomers.

The picture Bowers paints in his post regarding BlogAds demographic numbers is of a hyper politicized group of people in their late forties, brimming with excess wealth and massive educations just looking to crack some online political skulls. And this bears out in the reading; the content, tone, use of language, all tailors almost exclusively to a true believer, aging audience who want only to take the fight to the Rethuglicans and the Bush Crime Family and KKKarl Rove. The sense of humor is circa 1974, and I don’t mind being quoted that I can find four sharp objects sitting on the desk in front of me that I’d rather drive into my skull right now than read the daily “Cheers and Jeers” post at DailyKos.

The exception to this Boomer-run phenomenon, interestingly, is Wonkette.

Based on an argument I got into over at dKos, I’ve got a poll up asking folks to vote on their preferred name for the Millennial Generation, and then ask them to justify their votes in the comments (along with listing their age and what traits they ascribe to this generation). Probably a fool-hardy task, but I’d like to get it in front of the community and get a lot of votes, so give it a Rec. if you could.