PEW

The Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that while an older audience is moving to Facebook, Twitter is becoming younger.

Martha Irvine, an AP youth beat writer, wrote a story on this development a couple days ago, finding that while a significant number of youth are moving to Twitter, many of them are doing so grudgingly believing that Twitter updates contain too much minutiae for their tastes.

"Quite frankly, I don't need to hear if someone stepped in dog poo on the way to class or how annoyed they are that they lost their favorite pen," says Carolyn Wald, a University of Chicago junior who has not joined Twitter and rarely posts status updates on Facebook because "I don't want to assume that people want to hear those things about me, either."

One explanation for this surge is the increased availability of wireless devices for youth today. The study reports that the more wireless outlets youth have, the more probable it is that they will tweet.

The Pew Internet and Life Project just released a new report on online civic engagement that has received some big press, including BBC and Associated Press. In short, the Pew's report states that online activism has the same gaps w/r/t income and education that we see with offline activism. Press accounts have focused on the continuing gap in engagement between rich and poor. This thesis isn't as strong when looking only at young people, the age group most likely to engage in what the Pew calls "new" activities such as "making political use of social network sites" See their nifty table below.

When the above findings are analyzed by income status (income seems to be less of a factor in online engagement among 18-24s), there are important caveats mentioned:

It is difficult to measure socio-economic status for the youngest adults, those under 25, because many of them are still students. This group is, in fact, the least-affluent and well-educated age group in the survey. When we look at age groups separately, we find by and large that the association between income and education and online engagement re-emerges -- although this association is somewhat less pronounced than for other forms of online political activism.

The last bit is consistent with what other research in this field has found, specifically that the gap in activism between rich and poor is smaller online than offline. Income is tough to measure, especially in a survey such as this, so I think the focus on the class politics in this study and in the news stories is totally wrong. For one, educational attainment is what we know to be one of the most significant factors in civic engagement (as shown in an academic publication by the authors of the Pew study). It's also a more accurate measure on a survey. Furthermore, the Pew study does not use cell phones; their defense:

In addition, this was the final survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project not to include a random sample of respondents contacted on their cell phones. Young adults and minorities are more likely not to have landlines and exclusively use cell phones. A sampling on cell phones would likely have produced more young respondents and more minority respondents. The data here were weighted to reflect the composition of the entire U.S. population and there is evidence in other Pew Research Center surveys that the absence of a cell sample would not substantially change the final results.

The good news is is that it sounds like the next surveys will include cell phones. The troubling thing to me is that it's been 10 years since the last Census and the weighting (statistical way of making the survey sample be representative of the larger universe - the whole U.S.) could change significantly after 2010. All this is to say that not sampling cell phone users in this current Pew survey neglects the activism through mobile phones and omits a significant number of young people that do not have land line phones. It's possible that cell phone only users have difference engagement patterns that those with a land line phone. There are many hypotheticals so feel free to dream up your own.

The focus on online activism and class in recent months, including Danah Boyd's research, put too much emphasis on online activism and class politics in a way that isn't constructive. Facebook and MySpace are social networks that many people are on, but not everyone. Cell phones on the other hand, have penetrated every market and demographic. I understand that we cannot let the digital divide get out of control and that the internet provides a democratizing value. And yes, people act differently on various social networks, but there are like a gazillion social networks, used for a variety of purposes (there is only one SMS). Some social networks are even geared towards specific demographics, tastes and interests. There is nothing wrong with this considering the fact that in- and out-of group dynamics are always at play with humans.

OK, back to cell phones. Studies like these that focus only on online activism take away from the important activism down through phones. It's all digital, it just might not be the internet. Sharing a breaking news alert or reminding a friend to vote via text is a powerful form of one-on-one communication. Building a national broadband network is going to take time, but we already have the mobile communications network to take advantage of. In other countries, citizens use their phones for a variety of business and civic services. In the U.S., businesses are getting smart to using SMS to alert customers about identity fraud. The University of Maryland uses SMS to reach it's student population in the event of an emergency. Advocacy campaigns and all levels of government should think of SMS and cell phones (not necessarily smart phones) as a cheap and direct form of communication. Websites are constantly be upgraded and retrofitted with more and more interactive features, but if they aren't accessible to everyone, specifically poorer Americans, then so what. Innovation is easy when it has no bounds; it's much more challenging when you have to keep it simple (I think Einstein said something along these lines, so there). Companies like CREDO Mobile and The Extraordinaries are built on the power of cell phone activism.

We need to better measure activism with cell phones, as well. Amidst the growing demand for online engagement research, we should be careful to broaden our horizons to think of it as digital engagement. There are so many ways to connect virtually, many of which don't require the web. Word on the DC streets is that the National Conference on Citizenship, the U.S. Census Bureau and others are trying to identify some "e-citizenship indicators" to add to various government surveys. Here's hoping they don't forget to add questions about cell phone use.

A new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that mobile internet is closing the digital divide between whites and minority Americans.

African Americans are the most active users of the mobile internet – and their use of it is also growing the fastest. This means the digital divide between African Americans and white Americans diminishes when mobile use is taken into account.

• By a 59% to 45% margin, white Americans are more likely to go online using a computer on a typical day than African Americans.
• When mobile devices are included in the mix, the gap is cut in half; 61% of whites go online on the average day when mobile access is included while 54% of African Americans do.
• Looking across a range of digital activities – some done online typically using a computer and others being non-voice data activities on a mobile device – African American and white Americans, on average, do the same number of activities.

The rising number of relatively affordable internet-capable cell phones, cheap netbook computers, and falling laptop prices seem to have boosted the adoption rate of wireless internet. The trending indicates that the saturation of internet-capable mobile devices will continue to rise dramatically in the next few years.

The report also provides data on wireless usage by the 18-29 demographic:

The 18-29 demographic is still unsurprisingly ahead of the curve when it comes to mobile internet adoption.

The 48-page report has a ton of information in it and is definitely worth checking out.

The GOP is in a state of disarray, and it's sent their party identification numbers slide down the slippery slope to irrelevance. Arlene Specter's defection is just one more indicator that the conservatives activists who dominated the party's national scene during the GWB Administration have alienated moderate conservatives.

The above graph from the recent Pew Research Center study on political identification finds that GOP identity is down in all regions of the country - even the South, a stronghold of the modern Republican party. The decline in GOP identity has not resulted in an increase in Democratic identity. This may be due to the trend that people are less likely to view President Obama as listening to the moderates in his party.

At the same time, young people are very much in favor of President Obama (70 percent), much more favorably than older Americans (55 percent). As progressive principles are becoming mainstream among Millennials, we should be careful not to become an inflexible bunch, like the right-wing conservatives that have driven Arlene Specter and others out of their party. As GOP moderates and others become more independent politically, we should take the big tent approach that is the foundation of democracy, and include as many "blue dogs" and moderates as possible. The reality is is that it's easier to work with someone on friendly rather than hostile terms. This is easier said then done, however, because partisan politics has heavy, entrenched machinery behind it, but we should take heart in the long view. To pick up on something President Obama said recently, "I'm a big believer that things are never as good as they seem and never as bad as they seem." That's probably true of the GOP, too. They are down, but not out, and as they rebuild their party we should try a new approach with our moderate friends from across the aisle and invite them to share their ideas as we upgrade our democracy to one focused on citizen-power, not ideology. Remember, our shared problems and opportunities are bigger than our differences.

So, like, surprise! It might not be interesting that young people are moving towards online activism, but just so that the MSM knows what's going on, I will pull out a quote from Pew's latest study, entitled, Internet's Role in Campaign 2008: "Among young voters and those with broadband connections the Internet has eclipsed traditional media like television, radio and newspapers, the survey found." That's right, the Internet has WON! (By being the most democratic, open-source place for news, information and fact-checking.)

* 49% of Obama voters shared text messages related to the campaign with others; 29% of McCain voters did so.
* 17% of Obama supporters and 7% of McCain supporters got text messages directly from a candidate or party.

This makes sense. Businesses like CREDO Mobile, a Working Assets project, link progressive organizers, activists and everyday citizens. Given that young people are the most likely demographic to own only a cell phone, outfits like CREDO and others that connect organizers to mobile phone users should stand to gain a lot as progressive activists build upon the online organizing lessons of 2008. One of those lessons is that online video works! (If you haven't checked it out already, watch FM's own Sarah Burris on why paying taxes is important--the video was picked up live on CNN yesterday.)

Video advocacy is becoming even easier, because you can broadcast from your mobile phone using Qik. The flexibility of broadcasting yourself from your mobile means that folks can spend less time behind a computer, and more time doing advocacy when and where they want. Also, videos are a better medium to reach youth of color and those in low income communities, so 2010 may be the first real test of how Qik and online videos can be used to target younger folks that are generally left out of the political process. (Shana Glickfield over at NextGenWeb.org has a nice summary of how to use video advocacy.)

The Pew study also confirms that young voters are very active politically on social networking sites, and are the most likely age group to "customize political or election news." Young folks understand that you still need to make the Internet personal. Customizing a message for a target audience, whether that be high school students or union members, helps increase the probability that they will read (and possibly re-customize and share) the message.

While many young people are digital collaborators, they still haven't forgot the power of personal communication. The 2008 election wasn't about young voters on Facebook; it was about young voters talking to each other (using any medium) about politics and the election. I'll say it again because it bears repeating if you want to work with the Millennial generation: PEER-TO-PEER works! With all of the information available today, folks need someone they can trust to help them navigate and validate that information. This means that sending a surrogate on behalf of a candidate is probably less likely to win votes than if you were to organize a group of young people to reach out to their friends and peers.

Shocker, right? But - there are a number of religious groups that did vote for Obama or are becoming more democratic.

A new Pew Study interviewed people both before and after the election to get their reading on who they were choosing and categorized the respondents by religious affiliation. Because Pew is also pretty good about doing these kinds of things on a regular basis we also have some nice 2004 data to compare it to to see where the GOP lost and made gains.

First, the 2008 data. Understandably, the largest group were Black Protestants. This is actually no change - they are solidly Democrat whether its John Kerry or Barack Obama. What we know, however, is that turnout was significantly up from 2004.

What did change in 2008 was the "Hispanic and other Minority Catholic" vote. We knew about this mostly from the exit polls but now we can see the extent to which Hispanic Catholics fled the GOP. In 2006 we saw the beginning of this

"Pollsters generally agree that the same voters abandoned the president's party in droves during last week's elections (November 2006), with Latinos giving the GOP only 30 percent of their vote as strident House immigration legislation inspired by Republicans and tough-talking campaign ads by conservative candidates roiled the community. "

Here is the breakdown of 2008 vs. 2004 among religious voters according to Pew:

As you can see the right wingers didn't go for Obama... that was the shocker I proposed at the beginning. According to Pew

"To begin with, there was essentially no change in the vote of regular worship-attending white evangelical Protestants, the core of what sometimes is called "the religious right" -- one of the strongest Republican voting groups. . .

"There was, however, some change in the evangelical community, and it occurred mostly among less-observant evangelical Protestants. Among mainline Protestants there was an interesting pattern. In the exit polls, there was essentially no change among white mainline Protestants. But the data presented here suggest that there were some changes within this large religious community. For instance, Obama may have made some gains among regular worship-attending mainline Protestants. And it may very well be that a lot of the efforts to mobilize the religious vote paid off in that particular community. However, these data show essentially no change among the less-observant mainline Protestants, who were evenly divided. This group was where one might have expected bigger Democratic gains." (emphasis mine)

I highlighted that section because while Democrats might have made modest gains there was really only a small gain overall. Kerry lost with 49% of the vote in 2004 and Obama won with 53% of the vote. There isn't a lot of wiggle room here - so even modest gains can be significant and show democrats where they can look to develop further links and relationships.

Now with Young Evangelicals that's the fun part... Anna Greenberg from Pew did a poll for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Because people were saying that young voters were coming out for Obama she (smartly) over-sampled young evangelicals when looking at the groups of religious voters.

"Most of the national tracking polls had Obama at about 60% among under-30s, and he actually got 66%. So what we did with this poll was [a] multi-mode study. A certain number of interviews came from random digit dial, a certain percentage from the internet -- we didn't do the cell phone for a variety of reasons. We had, I think, the first real sample of young evangelicals and what we found was that, in fact, it was true that younger white evangelicals were more likely to support Obama than older white evangelicals."

Greenberg goes on to make an interesting point that traditionally young people vote more conservatively as they get older. This is because they tend to have children, go to church, pay taxes yada yada... Greenberg remarks that these people already do all of that. They should be conservative ... but they're not and she doesn't have a real idea on if they will develop into republican voters. I have no ideas either - its an interesting point I've never heard anyone discuss before.

All very interesting stuff that I think points to both the success in organization and the success in outreach. If you build it... they will come.... With youth outreach and faith based outreach that rivaled anything seen before the results were favorable.

If democrats want to continue to make inroads into these communities and tighten their grasp I encourage continuous issue based outreach through legislative sessions and constant communication with these groups to better develop loyalty to the party.

Who knows what the next election could bring, but if the groundwork is laid early with these groups, it could equate a much stronger majority.

One of the bigger points of contention this year in the (horridly geeky) world of polling was whether or not excluding cellphone-only users skewed the poll results. Throughout the cycle, PEW slowly but surely crept closer to saying "yes" to that question. Now that the results are in, they are finally making that judgment official.

According to a new report, polling that excluded cell-only showed a bias towards John McCain of 2.3 percentage points:

An analysis of six Pew surveys conducted from September through the weekend before the election shows that estimates based only on landline interviews were likely to have a pro-McCain tilt compared with estimates that included cell phone interviews. But the difference, while statistically significant, was small in absolute terms – smaller than the margin of sampling error in most polls. Obama’s average lead across the six surveys was 9.9 points among registered voters when cell phone and landline interviews were combined. If estimates had been based only on the landline samples, Obama’s average lead would have been 7.6 points, indicating an average bias of 2.3 percentage points. Limiting the analysis to likely voters rather than all voters produces similar results. Obama’s average lead among likely voters was 8.2 points across all six surveys versus 5.8 points in the landline sample.

When it came to young voters, the differences were much starker, though sample sizes make the numbers a little more fuzzy. Ultimately, polls that accounted for cell-only young people hit much closer to the final numbers among 18 - 29 year-olds on election night:

In Pew’s polling this fall, there was a gap of similar size in Obama’s advantage between cell-only young voters and those reached by landline, though this difference was not statistically significant given the relatively small sample of young cell-only voters. Among cell-only voters under 30, Obama led by 38 points (66%-28%); among those in the landline sample, Obama’s lead was 29 points (61%-32%).

Perhaps as a result of this pattern, Obama ran slightly better in Pew’s dual frame samples of young voters than in the weighted landline samples alone. As with overall voter estimates, the differences are small but statistically significant. Obama led McCain by 33 points (63%-30%) in the full dual-frame sample,
compared with his 29-point advantage in the landline sample.

The sample difference among likely voters under 30 was even larger. Obama led in the full dual frame sample by about 33 percentage points; in the landline sample his lead was 26 points. According to the national exit poll, Obama won this age group by 34 points, 66%-32%.

Lots of other juicy information out there for the data geeks about the demographics of cell-only, dual-use, and landline-only voters.

Pew Research has a new report: Young Voters in the 2008 Election. The details of the report read like they were ripped right from the blog posts here at Future Majority - I could get used to that.

If you are interested in demographic data on the 2008 youth vote, there's lots of good stuff in the report, including breakouts by income, education, race, religiosity, gender and party ID. The long and short being that, among 18 - 29 year olds, Obama won all racial, gender, and socioeconomic demographics, including white non-college males. The only group that he lost, according to the data, is self-identified young Republicans.

Beyond demographics, there were two findings in the research that I thought were noteworthy in that I hadn't seen them reported anywhere else. The first was this breakdown of the Democratic youth vote margin compared to the overall Democratic vote over the past three decades. We've touched on that data here (see the graphs on the sidebar), though we've never compared them side by side in this format. It really highlights how significant and unusual young voter's support for Obama is historically:

The second item I wanted to highlight, and to my mind the most interesting/new item in the data, is the vast difference in contact rates by the campaigns.

Nationally, 25% of young voters reported being contacted at some point by the Obama campaign, compared to just 13% for John McCain. In crucial swing states, that gap climbed as high as 35%. Back in 2007 and early 2008, I was worried that "maverick" John McCain, ubiquitous guest on the Daily Show, spotted in such movies as Wedding Crashers; a candidate who did quite well in his appearance at the MTV/MySpace Dialogue, would make a play for the youth vote. Maybe it was a function of the youth energy surrounding Obama's campaign by the time McCain emerged from the primaries. Maybe it was a function of McCain's smaller campaign budget and lack of a coherent field operation. But it looks like the Maverick completely ceded the playing field to Sen. Obama when it came to young voters. He didn't even try.

Looking at the contact rates for older cohorts, it looks like McCain had his hands full just trying to compete with Obama among his base - voters over 65 who were the only age demographic to choose him over Sen. Obama.

Pew notes that this disparity in contact rate accounted for a significant difference at the polls, and hits upon one of our favorite talking points here at Future Majority (emphasis mine):

But the electoral influence of young voters also depends on efforts made to mobilize them. According to the exit polls, young voters in key battleground states this year were far more likely to have been contacted by the Obama campaign than by the McCain campaign - and in some states they were more likely than older voters to have been contacted, a significant reversal from past patterns.

Nationally, a quarter of voters (25%) 18-29 say someone contacted them in person or by phone on behalf of the Obama campaign about coming out to vote. By contrast, just 13% were contacted by the McCain campaign. In 2004, nearly the same share of young voters was reached by the Kerry campaign (22%) as was reached by the Bush campaign (19%).

But the disparity was much larger in some of the key battleground states. In Pennsylvania and Nevada, which Obama carried by double-digit margins, more than half of voters under age 30 said they were contacted by the Obama campaign (54% in Pennsylvania and 61% in Nevada). The McCain campaign reached considerably fewer young voters in those states -- 30% in Pennsylvania and 26% in Nevada. Obama's get-out-the-vote operation also reached three times as many young voters as McCain's operation in Indiana (45% vs. 15%) and twice as many in Florida (32% vs. 16%).

The curious thing about the data is that, despite incredibly high contact rates for young voters, major swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida actually saw a significant decline in share among young voters. In those three states - almost the holy trinity of Presidential Politics, youth share of the electorate dropped 4%, 4%, and 3% respectively over 2004 levels.

The most obvious reason I can think of behind this dramatic underperformance is disinterest and disillusionment among young McCain supporters. Lacking any significant contact or encouragement from their candidate - who spent his final weeks on the trail shoring up Red States - perhaps they turned out in far lower numbers than in the more closely contested 2004 race. If those young conservatives sat it out on election day, and older voters turned out in greater numbers than usual, that might account for the rather dramatic decrease in youth share in those states.

Whatever the cause - and I'm sure it is something we'll be returning to again and again in the coming months as more data creeps out - this is great information from PEW proving once again that outreach to young voters works. Not only can it move votes, it can win elections.

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.

With all the polls in, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight takes another look at how those which included cell-phone samples fared against those that excluded cell-only users. Nate confirms what PEW found last month - that pollsters who excluded cell phone users consistently underestimated Sen. Obama's support:

The polls in the Cingular-y orange color include cellphones in their samples; the polls in gray do not. The cellphone polls have Obama ahead by an average of 9.4 points; the landline-only polls, 5.1 points.