MTV

The Caucus is reporting that the Obama campaign just became the first presidential campaign to buy advertisement time on MTV Networks:

Officials at MTV Networks report that he has bought commercial time on three of its networks, Comedy Central, VH1 and Spike, and that his ads could begin running on those outlets as early as Thursday.

Until this year, MTV’s networks did not accept political advertising, and Mr. Obama becomes the first presidential campaign to buy time with them, an official at MTV said.

Mr. Obama’s latest purchase of advertising adds yet another layer to what has been one of the most multi-layered, presidential advertising campaigns in history, reaching all sorts of voters with specially tailored messages on their specially tailored outlets.

Mr. Obama’s campaign confirmed it has made a “youth buy” but did not share the duration of this new rotation.

Obama is the first Presidential campaign to buy ad-time, but you may remember that MoveOn and the conservative Let Freedom Ring both ran ads earlier this cycle. I'll post video of the ad once I see it online.

TPM Election Central is reporting that the Obama campaign has accepted the debate structure put forth by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

This line from the acceptance letter by David Plouffe caught my eye. Emphasis mine:

Due to the late date of the two parties' nominating conventions, and the relatively short period between the end of the conventions and the first proposed debate, it is likely that the four Commission debates will be the sole series of debates in the fall campaign. Consequently, we believe that finalizing the arrangements for these debates with promptness and certainty is in the interests of both campaigns and the American people.

So does this mean that there won't be any YouTube debates? Or MTV Candidate Dialogues (which for my money were the most participatory and informative televised debates of the primary season)?

Did we all just take a huge step backward?

• Speak of the Devil. Just a few days after I posted about MTV airing attack ads on Obama, MoveOn counters with their own positive ad on the network. It's awesome that they're countering so quickly, but truth be told, I'm not at all wowed by the ad and found it pretty easy to tune out. Judge for yourself and let me know what you think:
• Wiretap has the lowdown on a panel on the youth vote organized by the good people at S.A.V.E. Tom Friedman was on the panel, apparently making only slightly less of an ass out of himself. Dispatch Politics has more.
• The Miami Herald profiles Party Politics, a Drinking Liberally style company down in Florida that is engaging young people at nightclubs using open-bar mixers.
• The Chronicle of Higher Educaction throws some legitimate cold water on Obama mania and what it means for long-term civic engagement.
• Fox News reveals that McCain has youth chairs in 30 states. Here's my question: what the hell are they all doing?
• Just how much of your salary each year goes to Iraq? Progressive Future has a new widget that will tell you, along with what else that money could have bought.
• Non profits in New Mexico are fighting back against harsh election laws that restrict their work and discourage voter registration.
• The Hip Hop Caucus is launching a voter registration drive.
• The National Hip Hop Political Convention is this week in Las Vegas. I'm working on getting someone to live blog. Hopefully that will work out.
• Broadband penetration will hit 77% by 2012. So long digital divide . . .
• The GOP now has an Obama smear site set up to look like Facebook. It might be clever if People for the American Way hadn't already done the same thing to the GOP primary candidates almost a year ago.

• MTV is finally running its first paid political ad - and it's an attack on Senator Obama run by a third party organization. Classy. In a conversation I had with an MTV rep, they said that third party ads would be reviewed and accepted on a case by case basis. If newfangled swiftboaters can get their ads placed, I assume MoveOn or other progressives will have no trouble getting their own ads on TV, right?
• EJ Dione at The Washington Post pens the Best. Op-Ed. Ever. on the youth vote by a professional political pundit.
• McCain is getting ready to roll out new social networking features on his website to attract young voters. Because McCainspace was such a smashing success last year, right? I think Bondelli has the right take on building new social networks, but I've got no problem with McCain competing with the College Republicans to see whose social network can suck worse. Divide that tiny potential audience up and doom them both to failure.
• Jason at the Sentinel posted slides from his two excellent Netroots Nations panels on how to monetize, popularize, and all around make your blog more kickass.
• MSNBC has an interesting story about the role that nonprofits play in our elections. If you want to know about the differences between 501c 3, c4, and 527 organizations, it's not a bad place to start, even if there are some questionable assumptions about issue advocacy and ideology in the piece.
• Youth to Power made Micah Sifry and Andrew Raseij's "political beach-reading list."
• Facebook has plans to take over the rest of the interwebs . . .
• Over at his other blog, Kevin reports that Kanye West and MTV are teaming up to welcome home veterans and shed more light on the situation of our soldiers as they return home.

Here's whats up

Young Obama fans crucial to victory, need resilience. Good piece about how young people can impact what is going on for Obama and the extent to which they need to be encouraged.

MTV Spotlights Young Veterans this holiday season. "on July 4th MTV2 will honor the millions of young men and women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Young Voters Look Carefully at Candidates. Harvard IOP's spring poll says that only 6% of those who plan to vote in November are doing so because of a specific candidate. This is another indicator that young people are smart enough to make up their minds about the issues.

Obama highlights Services and Responsibility on Patriotism Tour. In Monday's speech on Patriotism, Obama spoke about the importance of encouraging civil service and participation among young people

"The appeal may have an audience on university campuses and military bases full of young voters who have already taken up the service call.

"I think he's got a shot," said an Air Force officer at the speech, who requested anonymity so he was not seen as speaking for the service. "I think he's got real appeal with young people, all young people."

Young Evangelicals Contemplating Obama over at Huffington Post.

"At one evangelical college in Santa Barbara, CA, a small group of faculty and staff supporting presidential candidate Barack Obama are preparing for challenging conversations in their community as they look ahead to the fall semester."

Why are Republicans so Un-Cool answers the question in an interesting way. There are so many reasons... so so many.

Beep beep... get on board... Young Voters hitch a Ride on the Bus

Media Consultant Paul Gillin discusses media buys that focus on young people and how the 30 second spot doesn't do it for em anymore.

Young Voters hold the Key to the Future of America ... really just read the title... its a nice pick-me-up

As part of my gig with MTV as one of their Street Team reps for the 2008 election cycle, I cover politics and young people in Nebraska.

Candidates in Nebraska are getting dirty…in rivers and parks that need to be cleaned up.  Come meet some of the candidates running for office in Nebraska that are taking part in new brand of politics—the politics of service.

The candidates talk about what service means to them, why young voters are so important this election and what each of us can do to take a stand as a generation.  Democrats Work is a national organization, founded by two  young people Thomas Bates and James Carter, that encourages individuals and campaigns to live and show their Democratic values through service.  A chapter was started here in Nebraska by Natalie Benson.

Candidates getting dirty in Nebraska include:

Heath Mello, State Legislature, NE-05

Jeremy Nordquist, State Legislature, NE-07

Jim Esch, House of Representatives, NE-02

Scott Kleeb, US Senate

Get Involved with Democrats Work:

www.democratswork.org

Jane Fleming Kleeb is the Executive Director of the Young Voter Pac which helps Democratic candidates and State Parties win with the 18-35 year old vote through endorsements, on-the-ground support, training, strategy and money. She is also a MTV Street Team rep for Nebraska.

Update II: MTV staffers wrote back to me saying that they do not place local advertisement and will only be accepting spots from the Presidential campaigns. So the whole idea of local politicians making use of this is moot. Another lost opportunity. So what's my final answer to the question "what are these ads really workth?" Not a whole lot unless you are MTV raking in the cash.

Update: So apparently there is one study looking at the efficacy of political ads targeted at young voters. A study by Green and Vavrek on the efficacy of 30 second cable ads by Rock the Vote found a statistically significant increase in youth turnout in the target areas:

The average intent to treat effect for voters between the ages of 18-24, for which the ads were designed, was 2 percentage points with a standard error of 1.37.

Not a huge bump, but a bump none the less. Still, it is worth studying more this year and this is more evidence that it can benefit candidates. However, peer-to-peer organizing is still far more effective at reaching younger voters. Contrary to Devine's message, that should remain the primary method used by campaigns to engage Millennials.
------------------------

I want to talk a little bit more about MTV's recent announcement that all of their cable channels not directed at children will now accept paid political advertisements.

This was prompted by a discussion amongst a few youth vote colleagues. Some of the ideas expressed were not originally my own, but I agree with them and don't have permission to quote the person who suggested them. Nevertheless, I think they're really important and deserve to see the light of day.

At the heart of the problem is the simple question "what are these ads really worth?" According to Tad Devine, the Democratic strategist quoted in the piece by Ad Age:

"I think MTV's decision to accept advertising is an important indication that the youth vote this year will have a real impact on the outcome of the election," said Tad Devine, a Democratic campaign strategist who handled Sen. John Kerry's campaign four years ago. "Now campaigns have the opportunity to reach young voters in a venue where they congregate, and I'm sure Obama's campaign will look seriously at advertising there, given his advantage with young people."

Not quite. While the Nielsen numbers for MTV might still be quite high, young people are far more likely to "congregate" online or in their communities: at bars, coffee shops, concert venues, barbershops, etc. Studies consistently show that peer to peer interaction is the surest way to encourage someone to vote. Democratic candidates would be far better served reaching out to young voters in these venues than in airing expensive spots on national television.

Reaching young voters is not magic. They are out there, in your community (for real!) and candidates and campaigns don't need MTV to magically open the door to those young voters.

However, this does present us with an opportunity. As far as I can tell, no one knows how effective targeted cable TV ads are at reaching young voters because no one has ever been able to test it out. This was tried in 2004, when the Rappaports tried to air ads on MTV through the organization Compare Decide Vote, but those ads were not accepted.

While I seriously doubt any national political advertisements on MTV will have any direct impact on increasing young voter turnout, it could potentially do a lot at the state level to increase name recognition for down-ballot candidates, move young people onto candidate websites, and turn them into online supporters. If a Senate candidate like Scott Kleeb or congressional candidate like Darcy Burner could (relatively cheaply) purchase some time only in their local markets, that might do a lot for getting their name out there among young voters and moving that support online. From there, a smart campaign should be able to move some of that support offline or collect enough information to increase the effectiveness of their voter registration and GOTV work.

One final caveat. According to Ad Age:

"MTV Networks will accept political advertising that is national in scope, sponsored by a legally qualified candidate, a candidate's official campaign committee, a nationally recognized political party, or the official congressional campaign committee(s) of a nationally recognized party."

My reading of this leads me to believe that issue advocacy organizations will NOT be allowed to purchase air time. That is a shame. This could be truly useful for a group like MoveOn or PowerShift in raising awareness about anti-war or pro-environment actions. Yes, it would open up MTV to conservative messages as well, but that's what the open market of ideas is about. This seems like a big missed opportunity to get more young people actively involved in the national policy discussion.

• Anastasia Goodstein notes an interesting divide among social network users - those who replicate their offline social networks online, and those who use social networks to expand beyond their geographic communities into more niche, culturally based communities. Definitely worth thinking about if you're an online organizer. - Ypulse
• Project Vote notes that the VA is keeping wounded veterans off the voter roles. - Open Left
• John Ashcroft gets pwned by a college student on the question of waterboarding. - FireDogLake
• Alan Rosenblatt gets an up close look at MTV's Street Team '08 and declares the channel "still on the cutting edge" when it comes to political news We tend to agree, MTV has done impressive work so far this cycle. -TechPresident
• The Harvard IOP survey is getting more media play today. Check out write-ups in the Seattle PI, Boston Globe, and a blog post by IOP Director John Della Volpe.
• I haven't stopped by in a while, but looks like HillBlazers, the Clinton youth website, is a little more robust these days. So is her whole internet presence, argues Xavier Lopez-Ayaia. -TechPresident
  

In what is becoming a fine tradition around these parts, here's more information courtesy of the Harvard IOP survey showing that McCain has a snowball's chance in hell of capturing the youth vote this year.

As you can see, Obama has a pretty much insurmountable 21 point lead among 18 - 24 year olds, and even Clinton has a healthy 7 point lead.

Digging into the cross tabs a bit more, we can see just where Obama's striking lead comes from. In match-ups vs. Sen. McCain, Obama outperforms Clinton among self-identified Democrats and Arican Americans, and seriously eats into Sen. McCain's youth base - young white voters. He also, amazingly, pulls young Republican voters away from McCain.

Notice also that a Clinton candidacy further opens the door for Demcoratic losses to third party candidate Ralph Nader. That's a little scary - particularly if you were around and voted in 2000.

One more significant finding in the IOP data is that Sen. Obama is currently polling 3x better among college students at this time in the campaign than Sen. Kerry was against President Bush at this time in 2004.

In March 2004, Sen. Kerry was leading 48 to 38% among college students. That margin basically held. On election day Kerry won all youth 54 - 45%. Obama currently leads McCain 54 - 28%. I would like to see that margin repeated this November.

Two new polls of young voters came out this week. A few days ago MTV and CBS News released a poll on young voters (18 - 29), and earlier today the Harvard Institute of Politics released their spring survey of over 2,000 college and non-college 18 - 24 year olds.

There are a ton of data in each poll, and rather than post one mammoth (and probably unreadable) blog post on each of them, I'm going to spend the next two or three days picking out the interesting bits of information in smaller, bite-sized posts.

Right now I just want to start with the comparative topline data from the Harvard IOP Poll. It seems that by every indicator, young people - college and non-college - are more engaged in the political process than at this time last year or in 2004. This is not unexpected, but definitely worth mentioning. From the survey:

• 76 percent of 18 - 24 year olds say they are registered to vote an increase of 7 points since November (the last time the IOP conducted a survey).
• 60 percent of college students have seen voter registration materials around their school, an increase of 15 points since November.
• Nearly two-thirds (64%) of eligible young voters (72% of college students and 61% of those not in college) indicate that they will participate in the general election. This is an increase of three percentage points (3%) since the November 2007 survey.
• Young Americans who consider themselves to be politically engaged or active increased 5 percentage points, from 35 percent to 40 percent.
• Compared to this point in the calendar during the 2004 campaign cycle, which saw a 31 percent increase in youth participation compared to 2000, the percentage of college students who say that they are definitely voting has increased 10 percentage points (62% to 72%).
• The percentage of college students who are following the campaign closely increased 11 points, from 62 to 73 percent.

I'll have more shortly as I work my way through the survey.