PEW

We've been talking about this for at least a year here on Future Majority, but now Pew Research is ready to come out and say it. The number of cell phone-only voters are now numerous enough that their exclusion from traditional polling is skewing the data. A new report from Pew shows that in three straight surveys, lack of cell-only data skewed the survey results 2 - 3% in favor of John McCain.

From the report (emphasis mine):

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has conducted three major election surveys with both cell phone and landline samples since the conclusion of the primaries. In each of the surveys, there were only small, and not statistically significant, differences between presidential horserace estimates based on the combined interviews and estimates based on the landline surveys only. Yet a virtually identical pattern is seen across all three surveys: In each case, including cell phone interviews resulted in slightly more support for Obama and slightly less for McCain, a consistent difference of two-to-three points in the margin. [...]

As implied by these results, in each of the three polls, the cell-only respondents were significantly more supportive of Obama (by 10-to-15 percentage points) than respondents in the landline sample. For example, in the September survey Obama led McCain by a 55%-to-36% margin among cell only voters, but the candidates were tied at 45% in the landline sample.

In large part, this reflects the fact that a substantial minority of the cell-only sample is younger than 30 - a demographic group that has consistently backed Obama this year. Traditional landline surveys are typically weighted to compensate for age and other demographic differences, but the process depends on the assumption that the people reached over landlines are similar politically to their cell-only counterparts. These surveys suggest that this assumption is increasingly questionable, particularly among younger people.

As the chart on the right shows, cell-phone only voters under the age of 30 are substantially different in their identification with the Democrats and their support for Obama than are their peers with landline access. Young voters who rely solely on their cell-phones, and thus are often excluded from polls, are far more supportive of Obama and the Democratic Party than are their landline counterparts.

The implications are clear: Obama's youth support, already underrepresented in polls that screen for "likely voters," are further underrepresented due to their phone preferences. As a result, it's not unreasonable to look at the polls that exclude cell-phone samples and compensate for that bias by adding a point to Obama's total and removing a point from McCain's.

For those of us supporting Obama (and biting our nails in recent weeks) that's an encouraging thought, but it also begs a question. This problem isn't going to go away. In fact, it is only going to get worse. As the Pew report points out, cell-phone only voters are growing at a rate of 2% a year, and could be 17% of the electorate in 2008. As that population grows, will pollsters rethink their methodologies to accommodate that shift? And if young voters are being underrepresented due to their cell-phone habits and likely voter screens, what will that mean for the accuracy of the polls leading up to election day? Could the pollsters be as wrong in 2008 as they were in 2004?

Update: Here's another thought. I wonder if there is any connection between this and declining TV viewership among younger voters? Most attack ads are going to be delivered via TV advertising and repeated on network news coverage. These things also make their way onto YouTube, Blogs, MoveOn emails and more, so maybe there's nothing here, but it's a thought.
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Here's a little bit of weird data in a poll taken by Pew. Despite weeks of attacks by McCain - many of which were declared outright lies by the media and even Karl Rove - and another week in which Obama punched back with a lot of negative ads, young voters this cycle are less likely than young voters in 2004 to view this campaign cycle as overly negative.

When the public is asked to characterize the tone of the presidential campaign thus far, fewer now than in 2004 describe the race as too negative. Four years ago, more than six-in-ten (62%) said that the campaign was too negative, while just 32% said it was not. Now, 43% describe the race as too negative and a slight majority (51%) says it is not.

This shift in the balance of opinion is found across gender and party, but nowhere is it stronger than among young people (those under 30). For this group, 58% said that the campaign was too negative in 2004, while just three-in-ten (30%) describe it this way today. That is markedly different than older Americans. Among those 65 and older, a majority (61%) described the presidential race as too negative in 2004 and still half (52%) describe the campaign as too negative this year.

I guess Obama's generally positive campaign rhetoric might account for this? It seems odd that young people aren't responding negatively to so many attacks on their candidate . . .

In general, this is a very good thing. Negative campaigns can sometimes depress turnout - including young voter turnout. If most young voters don't see the campaign as too negative by now, there's not too much of a chance anything we see in the next 6 weeks will change their mind.

Despite home console gaming only being 30-odd years old, it's practically an old wives tale now that gamers are stoned-out slackers, glued to their Xbox, with little to no chance of hitting the polls on election day. Despite that bit of conventional wisdom, Rock the Vote got a lot of ink when it recently announced it was partnering with Microsoft to offer voter registration on Xbox Live.

The Bill O'Reilly's of the world probably gave a collective snort when they heard of the effort, but today, a new study by PEW Internet breaks down those old stereotypes and outlines why Rock the Vote has the right idea about gamers and our political process. According to the report, not only is gaming not an inhibitor of civic participation, frequent gamers were more likely than others to participate in a wide range of civic activities:

The quantity of game play is not strongly related (positively or negatively) to most indicators of teens’ interest and engagement in civic and political activity.

Analyses compared the civic and political attitudes and behavior of teens who play games every day or more, those who play games one to five times per week, and teens who play games less than once a week. For all eight indicators of civic and political engagement, there were no significant differences between teens who play games every day and teens who play less than once a week (after controlling for demographics and parents’ civic engagement). For six of the eight indicators, there were no significant differences between teens who play games one to five times a week and teens who play less than once a week. The exception was that 11% of teens who play games one to five times a week have protested in the last 12 months, compared with 5% of teens who play less than once a week, and 57% of teens who play games one to five times a week say they are interested in politics, compared with 49% of teens who play less than once a week.

There is a limit, to be sure. At some point, too much gaming gets in the way of participation in other activities, however this is only at the extreme end of the spectrum:

Within the group of teens who play games every day, time spent gaming varied from 15 minutes to several hours each day. The relationship between the number of hours teens played games the previous day and civic outcomes was statistically significant for two of the eight outcomes asked about. Teens who spend more hours playing games are slightly less likely to volunteer or to express a commitment to civic participation than those who play for fewer hours (see Table 2 in Appendix 2 for details).

The report also notes a correlation between "civic" gaming experiences and higher rates of participation. Civic gaming experiences are defined broadly:

• Helping or guiding other players.
• Playing games where one learns about a problem in society.
• Playing games that explore a social issue the player cares about.
• Playing a game where the player has to think about moral or ethical issues.
• Playing a game where the player helps make decisions about how a community, city or nation should be run.
• Organizing game groups or guilds.

The study found that teens with the most "civic gaming" experiences were also the most likely to be interested in politics and civically engaged:

--70% go online to get information about politics or current events, compared with 55% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.
--70% have raised money for charity in the past 12 months, compared with 51% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.
--69% are committed to civic participation, compared with 57% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.
--61% are interested in politics, compared with 41% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.
--60% stay informed about current events, compared with 49% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.
--34% have tried to persuade others to vote a particular way in an election, compared with 17% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.
--15% have participated in a protest, march, or demonstration, compared to 6% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.

Of these "civic" experiences, I think by far the most interesting is that of participating in a gaming community - getting on message boards, creating your own walk-throughs, etc. These are genuine examples of a participatory culture enabled by technology, and they are also markers of higher civic participation within the gaming community.

Teens who take part in social interaction related to the game, such as commenting on websites or contributing to discussion boards, are more engaged civically and politically. Among teens who write or contribute to these game-related websites:
* 18% have protested in the last 12 months, compared to 8% of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.
* 38% have tried to persuade others how to vote in an election, compared with 22% of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.
* 68% have raised money for charity, compared with 61% of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.
* 67% stay informed about current events, compared with 58% of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.
* 63% are interested in politics, compared with 54% of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.
* 74% are committed to civic participation, compared with 61% of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.

This is all to say that young gamers aren't slackers, they are in fact engaged citizens. Moreso even than some of their peers who are not gamers.

The kicker, to my mind, though, came in the final pages of the report:

Civic gaming opportunities appear to be more equitably distributed than high school civic learning opportunities.

The fact that civic gaming experiences are strongly related to many civic and political outcomes raised the question of how equitably they were distributed. Previous research has found that the high school civic learning opportunities that promote civic and political commitments and capacities tend to be unequally distributed with higher-income, higher-achieving, and white students experiencing many more opportunities than their counterparts.

This, however, was not the case for civic gaming opportunities. Only gender is related to whether teens have access to these opportunities. Overall, 81% of boys reported having average or frequent civic gaming experiences, compared to 71% of girls. Income, race, and age were all unrelated to the amount of civic gaming experiences reported by respondents (see Table 6 in Appendix 2 for details).

A CIRCLE working paper (pdf) found that high school civics education closely tracks with both voter participation rates and the racial and socio-economic status of voters. In short, richer, whiter neighborhoods have more and better civics education in high schools, and thus higher voter participation rates. Blacker, poorer schools are less likely to have such educational opportunities and suffer from lower turnout. We saw a version of this play out in the recent primaries in the huge disparity between college and non-college youth turnout.

The fact that formative civic experiences for low-income youth in American need to come from Xbox says a lot of really bad things about our schools and our political system. Yet is also reveals some opportunities to at least try to begin leveling the playing field.

Suddenly registering young people via Xbox Live doesn't just look like an innovative new idea, it looks like necessity.

Yet again, John McCain makes a play "for the youts." I don't know about you, but I think this video just screams "I'm relevant." The best part about it is that the embed functionality is totally busted unless you want an auto-playing loop in an ill-fitting frame on your blog.

And how's McCainspace's new "Generation 08" doing?

That's right, a whopping two members. To be fair, it's only been a day since the official launch, but hey, maybe it's also all the stiff competition from the College Republican's Storm Network. Or, I don't know - the real MySpace, or that FaceSpace thingum? Or maybe it's just yet another crap social network that no one wants to join. Why hop on a social network with little to no social network opportunities compared to the already robust social network you are already a part of?

Or maybe, as PEW found out in its new poll today, it's just that fewer and fewer young people are identifying as Republicans. PEW found that 37% of 18 - 29 year olds identify as Democrats, compared to just 23% who identify as Republicans. If you add in "leaners," those numbers jump to 55 to 36%.

Kind of hard to startup a social network when your brand is electoral poison.

It's a bit of a slow news day (unless Obama decides he's going to announce Bayh as his VP in the next couple hours). Most of my reading today has been tech heavy. Here's what I'm looking at:

• At WireTap, Sarah has an excellent piece up about rural broadband.
• For any organizations out there thinking about revamping their website, The Bivings Report will help you figure out if you need a content management system.
• Colin Delaney looks at how CRM software can help legislators better manage constituent relations work.
• Kevin Bondelli notes that the College Republicans are trying to counter program in Denver during the DNC. I've already signed up to receive their text messages and emails. Can progressive youth groups in Denver counter-program their counter-programming?
• PEW finds that McCain's Britney/Paris ads did have some effect after all: they dragged his campaign out of the shadows, giving him parity with Obama in the media coverage for the first time in weeks. I guess in that sense they were effective.

The PEW study I posted about yesterday is getting a lot of play. Kevin Drum blogged it, as did The Carpetbagger Report, and Marc Ambinder, all favorably.

Not all the coverage was favorable, however, and I want to point you to the excellent response by Kevin Bondelli to those who doubt the findings.

Here are the fallacies that these critics of the youth vote seem overly fond of:

1. Young people don’t vote, so it doesn’t matter if they identify as Democrats. Even if we accepted the untrue statement that young people don’t vote, they do eventually grow up, this isn’t Peter Pan. Since research in fact has shown that party identification for the most part stays consistent throughout life, it still should be troubling to conservatives.
2. The silly kids are Democrats now that they are young and don’t know any better, but they’ll grow out of it. Research says otherwise my conservative friends.
3. Not enough young people will vote to affect the 2008 election, since Gore and Kerry didn’t win with the youth vote. Have you not heard of a trend line? Surber actually shows the youth vote increasing from 2000 to 2004, he should know better. With elections as close as they are, as well as the examples of Democratic candidates in 2006 that did win because of the youth vote, I don’t know how they can ignore it.

Definitely worth a read today.

A new report by the PEW Research Center confirms what rising primary turnout is already telling us: there is a huge demographic shift approaching in the electorate in the form of the Millennial Generation, and that shift will largely benefit the Democratic Party.

As the PEW data indicates, this is a shift that is occurring among almost all segments of the Millennial generation, but the shift along gender lines seems to be most significant. Among young voters (18 - 29 year olds), in the last 16 years, young women have moved from a +8 advantage for the Democrats (50 - 42%) to an incredible +35 point advantage (63 - 28%). Among young men, that partisan identification has moved from a 10 point deficit (42 - 52% Republican) to a 14 point advantage (52 - 38%).

These are seismic shifts in the electorate and they are hugely significant.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, it was Generation X and the late Baby Boomers who occupied the 18 - 29 year olds slot in the electorate. They were very conservative as a group and helped elect Reagan and Bush Sr., and usher in the Gingrich Revolution. That laid the groundwork for the Republican majorities we have suffered through these last two decades.

The Millennial Generation is larger than the Baby Boom, and on almost every issue they are vastly more progressive. That fact is starting to come through in their voting habits and party identification. As the PEW data makes clear, Millennials could do for Democrats what the late Boomers and Gen Xers did for the Republicans - forge a new governing majority.

One more item of note in the Pew data. Research tells us that if you can get a voter to cast their ballot for a certain party in their first three major elections, that person tends to become a party voter for life. The PEW data shows that Gen X may be one of the first generations to actually buck that trend:

Apparently the Bush Administration's policies are so toxic that they are driving away one of the Republican Party's most loyal bases.

There was a great story on NPR yesterday that captured my attention. Pew recently released their extensive 35,000 person survey that examines the role of faith in daily lives and in political affiliation.

Here is a video that talks about it in an overview. I would embed it but there were issues.

It does a number of things that I consider notable. First, it does a great age demographic breakdown in Chapter 3 (pdf). 68% of 18-29 year olds consider themselves to be Christians. 43% of 18-29 year olds consider themselves to be Protestant but only 22% of those consider themselves Evangelical Protestants.

What is shocking is that more people are comfortable not only church hopping but are considering themselves to be unaffiliated with any religion at all. That number is on the rise according to the survey.

"A good percentage of folks in that group tell us that religion is at least somewhat important in their lives, but they have become disassociated from institutionalized religion," he says.

Among Americans ages 18 to 29, one-in-four said he or she is not affiliated with any religion."

When I think of the image of a Protestant Evangelical I see a young family maybe late 20's early 30's. Its actually old people 60-69 year olds consider themselves Protestant Evangelicals 29% and 70+ 30%.

Secondly, it deals with some of the smaller religions. When we talk about things like Evangelicals its a pretty broad group. Are we talking about Baptist Evangelicals, or Free Evangelicals, or non-affiliated Evangelicals? Most, (41%) of Protestant Evangelical churches are Baptist with 26% being Southern Baptist. And 64% of historically African American churches that are Protestant Evangelical are considered Baptist as well but they are more National Baptist.

This data is interesting when looking at retention rates from childhood. 60% of those who were raised in largely Evangelical families continued to identify as Evangelicals. But what is super interesting, is that a majority those who were less likely to stick around with traditional churches they grew up in were more likely to get involved in another "New Protestant" church. New Protestant Evangelicals are like the Rick Warrens and Joel Osteens of the world.

What they've seen too is that faith is no longer an indicator in voting preference. Where we saw a huge turnout for Republicans among Evangelicals in 2004 that is not necessarily the case anymore, according to reporter Alex Cohen.

"The new school of younger Evangelicals is big and getting bigger and they're not necessarily going to back McCain..."

According to Professor Clyde Wilcox from Georgetown University "Mega church leaders, you know, tend to be a little conservative, but in the middle. And they're not so afraid because they think their churches are doing just fine, so they are willing to enter into dialogue with all kinds of people..."

People, including Barack Obama...."

The piece goes on to tell the story about Obama's visit to Rick Warren's church in southern California in 2006 where he and Sam Brownback had an interesting exchange. Brownback welcomed Obama to "his house" and Obama later declared "This is my house too. This is God's house..."

As has been mentioned before both by Mike and by Zach Exley from Revolution in Jesusland, this is certainly Not Your Father's Religious Right. The "new school" is eager to deal with humanitarian causes, stopping genocide, creation care (i.e. global warming), and a slew of other issues where Republicans have faltered considerably.

The more Democrats become comfortable talking about their faith in a non-trite more genuine way and developing relationships with pastors in their districts or their states the less powerful I think the major old white guys will become.

In the end the cool thing is that Millennials are not merely changing the face of politics, they are changing the evangelical movement as well or they are simply leaving churches altogether which can put more "mainstream" churches into financial instability in the next 5-10 years.

Quick hits for a lazy Saturday. Look for an announcement here tomorrow.

• Are today's teenage girls the next generation of online organizers? Looks like it. A new study from PEW shows that young girls are more likely than boys to be online content creators (35% vs. 20%). The one exception is online video, which is still an area in which boys participate at twice the rate of young girls.
• In anticipation for March 4th, Sen. Obama is wooing young Latinos in Texas, trying to take a bite out of his opponents base. The senator was at UT Pan American this week speaking with students about his education plan.
• Hat tip to Sarah Lai Stirland at Wired for tipping me off to Hillary Speaks to Me, a grassroots video project designed to showcase Sen. Clinton's support among young Americans (from 4 - 35 looks like a descriptive range). The site is one of the most authentically bottom up efforts in support of Senator Clinton that I've seen. The creators say that it's not "too little too late," but I have to disagree. This would have been good to see eight or nine months ago, but at this point it is overshadowed by the sheer volume of quality user generated content clogging the tubes in support of Sen. Obama.
• At WireTap, Future Majority friend and researcher for CIRCLE Karlo Barrios Marcelo explains why three is the magic number.

PEW has released some interesting data on the news consumption habits of Americans, and they were kind enough to break out the 18 - 29 demographic in their analysis. By itself, the topline is pretty unremarkable: "young people get news on the internet," but there is a lot of useful information buried in the report

Pulling out some interesting findings:

• Cable news remains a very important distribution outlet for news if you want to reach young voters, but Sunday talk shows are virtually worthless for reaching young people.
• About a quarter of young people get their news through daily newspapers, but that influence doesn't translate online, where major political news outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post get relatively little attention from young people.
• Only 10% cite late-night talk shows (read: Daily Show, Colbert Report) as sources of information. This cuts against conventional wisdom, though it's not that surprising. Relatively speaking, those shows have a rather small, though granted highly influential and informed, audience.
• The Long Tail is a substantial source of news for young people - this means political blogs, blogs of friends, chat boards, email forwards - an amalgamation of sources that likely rely more on peer networks than and influence than broadcast capability. As the report notes:

However, even as the variety of campaign web information resources has expanded, there are indications that most internet users do not go online for the sole purpose of learning about the campaign. Rather, a majority of web users (52%) say they “come across” campaign news and information when they are going online to do something else. This practice is particularly prevalent among younger web users: 59% of web users under age 30 come across campaign news online compared with 43% of those ages 50 and older.

This seems particularly important because 52% is more than double the 20% who get their news from long-tail sources. This means that even for campaign news found via myspace, CNN.com, Facebook, or any other on-line source, odds are better than even that a young voter found that information through random searches or through exposure via a peer network.

Millennials are at a tipping point in their media consumption habits - particularly as it applies to politics. Broadcast outlets like the cable news networks remain important for the moment, but more and more it is exposure to news and information through online peer networks that is the dominant way of distribution information.